


Logic Prevails: Merthings Ride Sidesaddle

by RainofLittleFishes



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Accidental Baby Acquisition, Alternate Universe - Fae, Horses, Mer-people, Mermaids, Mermen, Merstuck, Nixies, Pets, Púca | Pooka, Sidhe, Supernatural Elements, This is not beta-read but there is a betta fish in it and his name is Fin McCool Strider., Trolls, fae, nix - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-02-15
Updated: 2015-04-24
Packaged: 2018-03-11 05:32:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 22,957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3316046
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RainofLittleFishes/pseuds/RainofLittleFishes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dirk “Bro” Strider is a responsible adult with almost six tons of dependent quadruped and a little bro away at summer camp for computer nerdlings. A possible eldritch abomination (aka Jenny Craig Greenteeth) just saw fit to move into his pasture and maul one of the kids that have been trespassing, kid in this case being an obnoxious, possibly teenage, mer-thing. Cue a normal-meeting-the-surreal-world-of-the-fae. Bro was never very good at normal anyway.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Curious Incident of the Mer in the Night-Time

It’s late at night and you’re immersed halfway to the elbows in soapsuds and dishwater in the kitchen sink when you here the whinnying and a few moments of horse-made thunder. Your girls are usually pretty quiet at night besides the odd gallop and there’s definitely an element of alarm in the sound. You dry your hands and drop the towel on the table as you grab the shotgun and a Maglite at a run.

The transition from the yellow light of the kitchen to the cool darkness of the outside is less abrupt than it could be, but bad enough. It’s a full moon and by the time you reach the pasture your eyes have adjusted enough that you don’t trip as you duck between the fence bars wondering if you’re about to get a face full of bear or a horde of rabid trolls or some drunk teens or something. The thunder of hooves has stopped.

You can see Val’s ghost pale Percheron form facing you, ears alert, and your brain makes out the image of the rest of your girls circled together. Someone whickers at you and it’s not an alarmed sound. Whatever bothered them, it seems to be gone. Your girls just aren’t drama queens. You think about finding knots and braids and flowers and feathers in their manes and tails for months now and you think about stupid kids.

You sling the shotgun over your shoulder and head over to finish your check. Val’s leans over to lip your hair and you can count five in the circle.  Star’s and Stripe’s cream manes and tails and feathering are clearly delineated. Maude and Mable are only visible by the highlights on their glossy black coats and the reflections from their eyes. The collection of irregular blobs of white resolves itself in Poke, the lone Gypsy Vanner, liberally covered in mud, which is why you didn’t see her initially, the shapes were all wrong. Poke’s standing over something almost protectively, head down nosing at it, then head up and looking at you. You still can’t make out what’s on the ground under her.

You shoulder your way in trying to figure it out. The something is dark and light and wet and foal-sized, but you know none of your girls are carrying, it doesn’t make any sense. Poke nudges it with her nose and there’s a moan that’s distinctively a pain noise. She sidles a step further away from you. You reach out and think better of it. No need to surprise whatever it is.

“Hey, you alright?” You still don’t know what it is, but if it’s not person, an animal won’t make fun of you for trying.

“Go awway.” The figure stirs for a moment and you make out two pale thin muscled arms, you can see the form of a head under dark hair and glints of light off of something you can’t resolve. The figure pushes as if to rise and falls back. The voice sounds young, a teenager, though you don’t know where the accent came from. It wavers in a way that makes you think of water. You can’t guess gender. You kneel down.

“Are you hurt?”

“Fuck off, ironblood.” It’s a vicious verbal swipe but whiny enough that it practically screams teenager. It also sounds pained. Saints preserve you from joyriding teenagers, you hope nothing serious is broken.

“You’re not in trouble. But you’re in my pasture in a knot of almost six tons of horse flesh. My girls are pretty quiet most of the time, but something spooked them. Want to fill me in on what happened?”

“Jenny Greenteeth had a hankering for fish but no stomach for steel.” The figure laughs and it’s like water bubbling, triumphant and defeated, like blood rattling in lungs. They look up at you and push their hair back with one arm. Something slaps the ground by Poke’s hind hooves. You have a sudden sympathy for your old laptop when it hits the blue screen of death.

Your brain insists it’s looking at a fishchild mer-thing, but it’s also insisting that you must have fallen somewhere and are tripping great hairy balls as gray matter oozes out your ears. It also unhelpfully supplies that Jenny Greenteeth is a folkloric water beastie that eats children. And anyone that it can manage to lure into the water. Someone at the vet clinic you once worked at liked morbid ballads. You didn’t expect them to be _educational_.

Welp, looks like you can’t just call an ambulance and make this someone else’s problem.

“If you try to eat me, you’ll die of it,” the merthing tells you. You think it’s bluffing, its eyes are large and liquid and blinking, but jeeze, you’re not a cannibal. Or whatever it is when one sentient eats another sentient regardless of whether or not they previously hung out on the same branch of the evolutionary tree.  

“Yeeeahhh, not looking for a fishwich here, Flipper, but if I dump you back in the brook, assuming that’s where you came from, is Jenny Craig gonna try to eat you or me?”

“Maybe. The dark mares got a feww good kicks in. She might be Jenny Green Toothless for a wwhile. Or she might just havve rowws an rowws.” You imagine the Sarlaac. The brook is lined with trees and the moon’s only so bright. You’re a little bit smug that Maude and Mable beat up a supernatural horror. Ten points for dressage and learning the capriole for shits and giggles and renfaires. You’re kind of horrified too. What if your little ladies got injured?

The heroines of the hour are currently back to cropping grass. Everyone but Val and Poke has wandered off, Poke now clear of the kid’s tail but still watching, Val at your back like a one ton bodyguard. You suspect that this is an all clear, at least for this part of the pasture. Something primitive and gibbering is jumping up and down in your brain and you very firmly shut the door in its monkey face.

“Do you want to go back in the brook tonight? Or up to the house? I’m assuming this Jen-gal won’t cross any thresholds? Or is that just vampires?” Fuck, does this thing eat horses? Why do you not own a flamethrower?

“Vvampires aren’t real. But the wild beasts under the Night Court can’t cross a private threshold uninvited. And it’s got no interest in anything that isn’t within a shadow’s fall of the water. Horses ain’t stupid.” The mer looks disdainful, like now it’s rethinking whether or not _you’re_ sentient. It shouldn’t be a big deal but you really want to know if it’s male or female or something else entirely, because the lack of pronouns in your own head is giving you a headache. You decide on male until further clarification because that look of distain looks _exactly_ like Dave’s.

“Okay, but do you want to hang out in the grass all night, or you want to come up to the house and maybe have a sandwich or something? You gonna be all right in the dew, no drying out?”

He bites his lip and glances back in the direction of the brook. His teeth look very, very sharp. His face is very young.

“Right, that’s two votes for visiting the land of landdwelling squares. You need help locomotoring on up?”

“You make no sense. None.” This is a hiss.

“Do you need help?”

He glares at you. “I wwill not be in your debt.”

“No debts. Just a sandwich. Maybe a Band-Aid if you need one. Come on little dude. One last offer for a ride on the Bro-back express or you can drag your fishy hind end up or down the paddock by your lonesome. And my girls are awesome, but when you’re a horse, the world is your potty, so you might want to watch for deposits.”

This last part’s mostly a lie. Val almost always uses the far corner past the barn for nature calls. She’s the oldest and has somehow managed to train the rest to do the same. Still, you doubt Flipper knows it and you don’t want to stand around arguing. Or flop around. Jeeze. How did he get here? Did he really pull himself up one of your girls and ride?

He looks defeated and hisses a “fine” that has entirely too many “f”s. It’s not in the least intimidating, just pathetic. You are so tempted to pinch his cheek like an overbearing auntie.

You shove the still unlit Maglite through your belt and lean down again, he raises his arms and you get an arm under his back and one under his tail not far from where his hips may or may not be. He weights a lot. Not as much as you, but certainly more than Dave who is still all long legs and arms like a not-quite-yearling that may, someday, reach the status of graceful enough to not make other people fall over laughing. His fishliness is one muscle-packed tuna.

There is now merbutt parked against your shirt. He feels colder than a human ought, and a lot less wet than you expected, but there’s a smell almost like blood that you don’t like. Poke shakes herself out and wanders off, like she’s concluded a job and is returning to her regularly scheduled programing. She’s still covered in mud, though this part of the pasture is mostly dry. Val follows you to the gate. You really want to check them all for injuries and your hands are entirely full of sulky alien teenager. You manage the gate, just barely, and are grateful that the posts are sunk so square that the gate has never fallen out of alignment, because you’re not sure how you could have wrestled with it without dropping him.

He mutters and shifts and complains the entire way, but you can feel him tense as you get to the house door.

“Hey, not gonna hurt you. Want to tell me what you were doing in the pasture?”

“None a your business”

“My pasture, my horses, my house, want to try again?”

“Wwe just wwanted a ride.”

“We?”

“Me an a feww a the others. Not many horses left and not many that don’t mind our smell. Wwasn’t gonna hurt em.”

“You been galloping them up and down on full moons?”

“They don’t mind.”

“I noticed. They usually want to sleep in the day after and sometimes we had work to do.” Work, for you, outside of the animals, is mostly voluntary and a matter of pride, but it’s the principle of the thing. Younger Bro would rightly kick your ass if you learned to take it for granted.

“Wwe didn’t hurt em.” And this is whiny and sulky and utterly honest. He buries his head into your shoulder as if maybe that will turn the questions off. You can feel something hard and bumpy press against your collarbone.

This argument and the ensuing sulk gets you through the still open door and up the stairs to the old claw foot tub in the bathroom. You heft him up a bit to grab a big soft towel and toss it in before you lower him in. He doesn’t want to let go of you, but you gently disentangle his fingers from your shirt.

“I’m gonna turn the light on now, okay?” He grunts.

You turn on the light and he flinches anyhow. You catch the visible shrinking of his pupils as he opens his eyes. His irises are purple, like violets, or Elizabeth Taylor, or a cheap Harlequin novel heroine. The dark upturned horns are not a figment of your imagination, or the shadows, or two clumps of very stubborn cowlicks. They are symmetrical, knobbed, dark and polished and look a whole lot more sophisticated than his apparent age, very devil’s chic, S&M antelope. You realize that the wet sheen on his skin and tail and fins isn’t water. It’s blood. Violently violet blood.

“That’s pretty hardcore, little fish. Riding sidesaddle at the gallop with no tack on a ton of horse. My girls are pretty sweet, but they could squish you by accident.” You don’t say, “It looks like old Jen tried to eviscerate you.”

You turn the water on low and heat it to just lukewarm, turn the crank so that it’s coming out of the handwand instead.

“Want to clean up a bit, mud puppy?”

He swipes the wand as if you weren’t offering it and rinses his hands and arms and face and hair. That’s the easy part. Then he bites his lip and waves the current of water over his chest and belly and down past his hips, or their analogue. He works free more than a few clots of coagulation and pale lilac spins down the drain. His tail slaps the wall well past the tub end, like the pain’s so bad it has to come out somewhere but he’s determined to finish before he faints. He has webbing between his knuckles and fins along his forearms, thin, articulated in spines and panes. The ends of each segment are tipped in points, frilly, delicate, and very sharp. Those were very near your neck and you didn’t notice. You wonder if he’s venomous.

You turn your back and scrub your hands and arms in the sink, pull out some of Dave’s expensive all natural organic hypoallergenic body wash and lather up a wad of likewise expensive all natural organic cotton towel.

Dave’s a tough nut off the chipped old block and he’s allergic to just about every newfangled modern lab concoction known to man or womankind. You’ve long since gotten used to using soapnuts so that Tide now makes even you sneeze. You keep a bundle of sage in the kitchen for “purifying rites” every time one of you buys a new video game, or clothes, or whatever is likely to set off Dave’s aggressive contact dermatitis. There’s another in the car and sooner or later people get used to it when Dave wears gloves until he sages the heck out of things. You put it into both the allergy and religion section of the camp’s application. You don’t know how it works, but it does, so you don’t think about it too hard in case it gets shy.  

You turn back to the tub and its crabby and pained occupant. “Here, Humpty Dumpty, scrub up and I’ll get the kit to sew you back together.” He’s breathing hard, in through his nose, out through his mouth. There’s a not quite whistle every few exhales.

He frowns and swipes the wad and the body wash and is mostly finished by the time you’re ready with the kit. You take a look at him again and suppress a sigh of relief. It’s still bad, the kid looks like he’s been waltzing with Wolverine, but the deepest gashes, in his sides, were apparently gills or thereabouts, and with the opercula clean and shut he doesn’t look so much like a fillet. You use up all the butterfly band-aids but you don’t have to give him any piercings to pull him back together, so go you.

“Is the toothy wonder venomous?” It’s a sudden thought and you can’t help but blurt it out.

“Not that one.” Well. It could be worse.

You dump the trash in the bin and turn back to your guest. Interrogation time.

“You can call me Bro. What should I call you?”

“Your majesty will do.”

“Flipper it is. Do you want a hoop to jump through now or later?” You’re not sure what the entertainment options under the brook are like for the aquatic set, but you’re pretty sure sarcasm is universal.

“…Dan. You can call me Dan.” You don’t ask if it’s short for Daniel, Danielle, or something unpronounceable and elvish.

“So, Dan, food. What can and can’t you eat?”

“Wwhatevver you’re havving is fine.” This is unexpectedly polite, if sullen, and you wonder if he thinks you’re teasing and not actually offering or is afraid you might poison it. This is the kid that just begged you not to eat him. He’s rude, but you’re trying not to imagine how being a typical teenager is somehow a criminal offense wherever merfishdudes come from.

“Cooked chicken? Bread? Tomatoes?” He nods, you pick the shotgun back up, and you meander out the door and jog down the stairs, almost tripping on Bec on the landing. Bec opens one eye and closes it, and you suspect, as you always suspect, that the tripping part was only unintentional in that you didn’t fall for it. You hang the shotgun back up over the mantle. The carry strap's a bit muddy but you never took the safety off, it can wait.

You slap together three sandwiches on Dave’s super organic sprouted multigrain, which you’ve been buying like clockwork even though Dave’s away for another month at camp, and you work your way back up the stairs without using the landing. Bec rolls over after you vault him and you hear him thump back downstairs. There is very little that he does that is not in some manner insolent. You’re used to it. “Dan” has no idea of the competition.

Dan consumes the bread and poultry with the enthusiasm of a bottomless pit, prefacing the whole thing by pulling out the tomato slices and gulping them whole with all the relish of a fraternity pledge sheep swallowing a live fish. Evidently chicken of the sea is a thing but tomatoes aren’t. Who knew? The sidelong glance at you after is all Dave, checking to see if you’re witnessing his awkward. You raise a brow in reply. You know all, little man. All the awkward, every moment.

You wait for him to get halfway through the sandwiches, far enough in that he might have let his guard down a bit, far enough to go that his hands are still full.

“So, Dan, I’m woefully unschooled in the life and times of fish-folk. Enlighten me. Do you need to stay wet in the tub ‘til we can find you a safe place to get back in the stream? Do I need to drive you somewhere for you to get back home? Do you turn into a pumpkin at midnight if we don’t find your one true love?”

“Fucking unschooled is right. I’m a nixie. Drying out wwon’t do shit noww that I’m not incubating mudballs. Your tub is made of rocks an iron. You try sleeping in it and I’ll sleep wwherevva you usually do.”

“No deal, Nixie-Dan. But if you want to join the land of night shirts and down-filled pillows, who am I to crush your dreams? You need to crap or piss first? ‘Cause that’s the deal-breaker, there’s no pissing the bed.”  

“Yeah, wwhatevva, hand me somethin ta dry off.”

You hand him a towel and drop another on his head, rub between the horns in totally-not-a-noogie. He elbows you and rubs his hair by himself until it frizzes. The other towel gets dabbed cautiously down his body, around the bandaged, already dry areas, until he’s drying the tip of his tailfins and you know that if Dave was here he’d be itching for a picture. You don’t know if his tail is more in the line of bony fish or cartilaginous shark, but it subscribes a heavy arc of delicately tinted scaled muscle and the window of old tile peeking through is just surreal.

Dan finishes and lets you scoop him back up. Your back protests the angle and you promise it that this is the last time. You snag another few towels because his nixie butt is still sopping and you dump him in your bed in the next room over, because there’s no way you’re putting him in Dave’s. Score one for not making it, ‘cause you’re going to need to change the sheets after this one.

Dan burrows in like a champion and you dump a plaid flannel shirtdress on his head. “Should you wish to resign your title as reigning empress of nudity beach, your majesty.” He wraps himself around the shirt like a seahorse around a stalk of seaweed, and he blinks up at you, and yawns, but doesn’t put it on. You’re pretty sure he fluttered his lashes at you. You ignore that and tuck him in.

You tromp back downstairs to actually check on your girls and lock up for the night. When you get back upstairs Bec is lying on the other half of the bed glaring at you, red ear upright and black flopped, as usual. The glare is also standard. Dan is already asleep, buried in the blankets, the slow and steady rise and fall under the covers reassuring you that one, you didn’t imagine this, and two, you didn’t accidently kill him.

You yawn yourself and change your grimy shirt and jeans, grab a blanket and pillow from the closet, and go back downstairs to sleep on the couch. Normally if Bec decided to make a play for your bed you’d show him who has the opposable thumbs and dominance, but you don’t feel like arguing while Dan’s sleeping. Bec didn’t try to take a chunk out of him yet, so they should be fine for the night. Bec is never shy about who he dislikes (everyone, now) or how much (a lot).


	2. Introducing Fin McCool

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Post-bump-in-the-night, Bro's visitor has not vanished.

The next day, you rise at 5am on the dot, sans alarm, as usual. You check on your guest, let Bec out and take care of barn chores before heading back in.

You’ve refilled the food and water for the nameless not-quite-feral barn cat who gives you a cursory mew, ankle-twining, and then sits to stare until you go elsewhere. The Colonel used to set out dishes of milk too, but it smells terrible when it sours and gives the cat diarrhea, so you stick to the occasional dish of chicken broth, which someone, cat or not, always cleans thoroughly. You really hope it’s not a bear.

The girls are groomed and munching in the barn. You’ve picked their hooves down to their clean, sound frogs, checked every shoe for things caught under or loose nails. You’ve pulled out dozens of thin brittle teeth fragments embedded in what is usually a collection of mud, manure, sawdust, and the very occasional small rock. Maude and Mable had dried mud and green slime up to their knees and hocks, and Poke looked like she’d been rolling in mud, with an extra helping in her feathering and mane, but everyone’s moving fine and, just like last night, you can’t feel anything off in their legs or elsewhere.

You head back inside to shower and make breakfast. You need to inspect your fencing but not before interrogating your guest. You’ve dealt with raccoons in your trash cans, the bear that absconded with Jade’s fourth grade “optimal bee hive construction” project, the annual wasp nests under the eaves. You’ve fed and trapped and released feral cats after the snip and you’ve fed and caught the _very_ occasional glimpse of a feral troll, a thin gray figure with bright horns, shy and long since gone after the winter it lived in the hayloft. You festoon the barn with flypaper like you’re decorating a Christmas tree with tinsel. All the chickens died of old age and are buried in the far pasture where Dave and Jade made them tiny crosses even though neither of them was catholic and you haven’t been to church since you were seven. You’d like to think you’re pretty copacetic with all the native and nonnative wildlife. 

A giant people-eating water monster is an entirely different kettle of fish. You think that the Colonel would have shouted “Tally-Ho” and sallied out to shoot it. The thought of Jade and the Colonel hurts like it always does, but the pain is almost reflexive now, as is the mental change of topic.

Your guest is still asleep when you finish cooking breakfast, organic free-range hella expensive scrambled eggs and illicitly smuggled delicious canned hash which Dave is in no way aware that you store behind your boots in your closet. You shove the covered pan in the oven to stay warm and out of Bec’s reach and fill all four slots in the toaster with Dave-approved bread. You depress the lever and head upstairs to roust your guest out of bed.

In the natural light through the windows, “Dan” is simultaneously more real, from every pore and strand of hair, and more surreal. His ears are pointed and there are even more fins hiding in his hair, and closed opercula along his neck. You’re not sure if you didn’t notice last night or if he’s not quite the same as before. His horns are gleaming even as his hair looks like one ginormous rat’s nest. You shake what you’re pretty sure is a shoulder under the covers.

“Hey, kid. Rise and shine, Danny.”

“Go awway, Cro…” he rolls over and buries his head under a pillow. His horns make little ‘zipppp’ sounds against the cotton. Why is that cute?

“If you’re not up in thirty seconds, I’m feeding your breakfast to the dog.” Dog doesn’t adequately describe Bec, but you figure that there’s probably a quota on “giant beasties that want to eat you”.

There’s a groan, but some motion, and you helpfully pull off the outermost layer. Dan flails an entirely fin-less arm at the rest of it and between the two of you, the covers get pushed down to his belly. The scrapes along his chest look pretty good, scabs well filled in. You poke one, gently, and the crust holds. Merkids heal fast. This looks like a good week or two of healing.

“Looks better, kid. How you feeling?”

He groans but you’re pretty sure it’s more the universal teenager protest against getting up than outright pain. Jeeze Louise, it’s past eight thirty in the morning, what’s his issue? One of his thin, now unwebbed hands pushes the covers down past his maybe hips and today’s variety of weird is that he now has two tails, and more scabs and scabbing under the butterfly band-aids, but still no visible genitalia, not that you need the tour but this one _is not in the least bit shy_. His tails are twined together like he twined around the nightshirt last night, like they’re trying to take comfort from one another, and you already know that as soon as he’s awake he’s going to be obnoxious again, but the behavior seems so young that you can’t help but feel protective. He sits up and tries to scrape a hand through the tangle of his hair, winces.

“You need a lift to the toilet or can you get there yourself?” You don’t know if nixies are an indoor plumbing sort of folk, but you assume anything smart enough to sass you can figure out not to shit in the nest. He grimaces and rolls to the floor like a giant cobra in what would be an impressive move except that the impressive muscular control is rather shot by several furrows breaking free of their scabs. He bites his lip so hard now he’s bleeding there too. You can almost hear a high-pitched whine like a not-quite-dog whistle, and his brow is furrowed.

“Okay, macho bullshit on your own time, I’m gonna give you a lift.” You sit on the bed, wait for him to reach his arms up, and lift him again, cross the short distance to the next room over, plop him on the john and close the door most of the way on the way out. You’re changing the blood-spotted sheets to the sound of the toilet flushing when you hear it.

“Bro! There’s something in here!”

Your big brother credentials require that you flash step in. In retrospect it’s totally worth it, but you try not to laugh too loud. Forget that. You just try not to sprain a rib laughing.

Dan’s still on the porcelain throne, both tail ends curled up like a perfect exaggeration of a 50s housewife on a stool after spotting a mouse, down to the accusatory finger. The finger is pointing at the very tiny red figure in the tank on the counter.

“Bro, it’s _wwatching_ me!”

 “That, little dude, is Fin McCool, and entertaining him is the price of indoor plumbing.”

“I fail to see how something so small can be a legendary wwarrior. Also, it’s wwatching me and that is _not acceptable_.” Dan’s voice hits a much higher pitch at this part. It’s pretty funny coming from a naked nixie who’s been resisting all attempts at being clothed.

“That’s what he does. It’s not like he has much else to do.”

“Bro. The fish is _staring_ at me.”

“Take it as a compliment, you’re fine fish entertainment.” You don’t see what his problem is. There’s got to be plenty of fish in the brook or ocean or wherever he lives when he isn’t criticizing your hospitality. You don’t see what the big deal is. You regularly read the newspaper from the porcelain throne and tend to narrate the editorials for Fin in a variety of voices and hand motions. Fin is a very good audience. He has never said an unkind word or rolled his eyes at you. Even your beloved _Valiant_ produces a lot of shit for you to shovel.

The bathroom was long ago declared The Sacred Place From Which No Adult Shall Be Extracted Unless Someone Is Bleeding Or Concussed, and Dave might be too old for it to still be an issue, but the odor of sanctity is still pristine.

“If he doesn’t stop I’ll eat him.” The finger lowers. The arms cross. The shoulders hunch. You think he might be about to pout.

“No, Dan. No eating family members. One, he has seniority. Two Dave would cry and I am contractually obligated to beat up anyone that makes Dave cry. Three, there’s all sorts of shit in the water and you’d probably die and Fin McCool would have to burrow his way back out like a chestbusting alien baby. And then Dave would cry if he found out that Fin McCool was a vicious chestbusting alien baby, so see point two. And four, I already made breakfast and the only thing holding it up is your prissiness, so no, times four.”

Dan hmphs and lets you help him up onto the counter to wash his hands. He looms over the tank as much as possible and even flashes his little ear fins and Fin McCool gladly flares back and does a little dance. You drop Fin his breakfast and he attacks it happily then does a few triumphant patrols of his territory. You have a mixtape somewhere of Fin’s theme songs, all the hilarious things a betta’s gotta do, just with some mood music to give them the right air. Fin’s victory lap looks especially epic to “We are the Champions”.

Dan accepts the nightshirt you dump over his head. He accepts a piggyback ride down the stairs to the kitchen. You can still feel him turn to glare at Fin long past the time that there’s even a remote chance the tiny fish can see him. Kid is freaking hilarious.

Fin McCool is Dave’s fish and if there’s anything odd about him, it’s that he’s not dead yet. Bright red and frilly, Fin’s a crowntail and at ten is probably on something like his third life. Unless he’s hiding tiny vampire fangs and slinking out at night, which, you admit, would actually be pretty cool, ‘cause it’s not like he could drink much. He’s a tiny fish and mostly fins and attitude, like a butterfly decided to go scuba diving. You just have to admire something that small with that much attitude.

You like Fin. He’s always excited to see you (or anyone or anything that moves, really), and unlike Bec, he’s never tried to bite you, hog the bed, eat the newspaper before you can read it, or steal your dinner. Also unlike Bec, he always eats what you feed him.

Fin has a five gallon tank, a heater, a filter, and a bubbler, and enough plants that he could hide all day and you’d never find him, but he comes out whenever you visit. He builds a bubblenest every few months in a sort of perpetually optimistic view of the world and if you felt like being a fish grandpa, you could have gotten him a mail-order bride and been on like your who-knows-how-many-nth-iteration of great-grandpa amid an exponentially exploding group of fish tanks. Like Bec and like you, Fin is totally going to die an awesome but disputable bachelor, because you are not a fish pimp.

Unlike Bec or you, there is no possibility that his death will entail you tragically forgetting to drag Bec to his annual vet visit for his annual booster sticks for rabies, jolly thoughts, and whatever else they prevent, followed successively or simultaneously by his annual attempt to maul you more seriously than usual.

Fish are fucking restful.

*

Dan is clearly more teenager than fish because you feed him and he clears his plate and annihilates seconds, but he isn’t particularly grateful about it. Even Bec cleans his plate, a quarter of this morning’s eggs and hash on top of one third the recommended daily kibble for a beast his size. You let Dan peck at a third serving of hash and eggs and ask him to tell you more about the Thing-in-Your-Brook. Is it still there? Is it always there? Are there more than one? Why now? Can you get rid of it? Can you kill it?

“Probably not until nightfall, probably not, yes, don’t knoww, yes, and yes, but wwhy bother?” He twirls his fork in an insolent sort of “blah, blah, blah”. You take a breath and a slow exhalation, because you’re don’t need to let him know that he’s being obnoxious, he’s trying to provoke you. You will not be stabbing him with his dinglehopper. You are a responsible adult with a teenager and six tons of dependent quadrupeds. And a fish. Think of Fin. Think calm, restful thoughts to the sound of your internal bubbler.

“Okay,” you reply, “I’m going to need some clarification.”

Pinning down answers takes you the rest of the way through his third helping and well into bribery-by-hair-comb. All those paintings of mermaids with mirrors and combs? Totally accurate. You hand Dan the heavy silver mirror that Great Aunt Joan gave Jade and help him work all the knots out of his hair, starting at the bottom and French braiding it after.

Your hands and mind remember how to do this, even as you miss Jade. You last did this for her two years, eight months, and two weeks ago, give or take. You smooth his hair up and over his ears, around his horns. The braid goes straight down his back and is glossy and thick, dark as India ink. When you finish, you tie it off with one of Jade’s tinier hair ties. For a girl who liked to keep her hair loose like some wild hooligan she had a huge collection of them with all sorts of sparkly. You tell yourself you’re just borrowing it, that she wouldn’t mind. Kid was generous. Not always nice, but kids need to learn not to be pushovers. Your hands remember, no need to get all snotty about it, Dirk Rodrigo Strider.

So. If Dan knows what’s going on, and if he’s been truthful, you really need to inspect your fencing, and before dark. You settle your guest on the sofa with the hand mirror and the TV remote and he seems content to chill. Both screen and mirror seem to exert a strong compulsion on your tiny Narcissus, so you feel okay about leaving him there. The fridge is full. If the worse happens he can pull himself to the door and down to the brook. It won’t be fast, but he won’t die, and if Dave doesn’t hear from you he’ll call one of Sollux’s parents and they’ll check on the horses, Bec, and Fin.

Attorney Vantas might be an iron hand in a velvet glove, but he’s also a total creampuff with kids and animals. He’d probably adopt the damn barn cat _and_ the nixie. He already knows your intentions for Dave and the horses. You don’t think about how Bec is entirely unadoptable. At least he’d be put down by someone who cared.

Fuck this morbid shit. You briefly indulge in imagining Dave and Sol, both unrepentantly opposed to the use of mirrors, hairbrushes, and any hint of having cared about what they’re wearing, and you think that they and the nixie would all deserve each other.

You leave the house to try to ascertain exactly how high or deep the shit pile that has set up shop in your brook is. You take the time to sling on a back harness to hold the shotgun and your sword. The sword pretty much never leaves the house, the Colonel had a gym set up in the finished basement and there is more than enough room to chase Dave around into some semblance of agility, if not grace. The farm is big and your neighbors some distance away. There’s no one to hear you scream and no one to object if you arm yourself to walk your own fence line.

You keep the steel blade clean and Dan convinced you that intent is pretty strong with this kind of thing, so you even licked the flat of it on both sides, up to the edge, let it dry before you sheathed it, thinking thoughts about what you’d do to anything that threatened Dave the whole while. You were half convinced that Dan was having you on with this, but he’d been pretty solemn and he hadn’t laughed, so either he really believes it or he’s a better actor than you thought.

The break in the fencing is pretty obvious once you get into the woods and cautiously cross the bridge across the stream. Val follows you like she often does and you watch her cross as if the heavy clip clop will bring a mythical type of troll out from underneath. The girls all get along and never play games about coming to work when you want to catch them, so you never bothered trying to subdivide the pasture, which covers several acres of field, woods, and the stream. There’s even a small pool in one of the elbows of the stream, with a big basking rock, smooth stones on the stream bed, and a rope swing. You’re going to cut the swing down with extreme prejudice and tell Dave he’s _never allowed fun again_.

Danny doesn’t think the Thing will come out during the day, but he’s also shown no interest in leaving the house. You might be able to parley that into him having some active concern for the continuing wellbeing of his fellow residents, but you’re not banking on him having made the connection that if he wants to stay in clean sheets and hash browns, he needs to keep you alive. You have no idea how old he is, or the equivalent. Sometimes he seems like a teenager from a potentially dangerous place. Sometimes he acts like he’s two.

You find the break and wonder how you’re going to get the fence fixed before sundown. Four of the massive wood posts are down, three uprooted or buried by a tree fall and the last partially rotted and ripped in two like something chewed on it. The bite radius is _insane_. You inspected this section last week and there’s no way that rot was here then. The hairs on the back of your neck are raised and you try to balance between convincing yourself it’s just the thought of magic and staying alert in case something else really is here.

You conclude that you can’t finish this by yourself, not today, and you return to the barn and harness Val up. You lead her across the bridge with your ears pricked and your hand ready to go for your sword.

You trim all the limbs off the fallen tree with the chainsaw and Val pulls when you ask it and you get the tree sectioned into replacement fence post lengths. You get two of the four fence posts back upright and level, connect them with the split log rails that made it through the tree fall without damage, and get the two damaged posts out. You have plenty of rails in the maintenance shed and no posts. It’s still mid-afternoon and there’s no way you’re leaving this unless you have to. Val cocks a hind leg and drops her head, though you can still see her ears swivel as you work, or as a squirrel rustles in the trees, or a bird calls. It’s reassuring to have company even as it means that there’s someone else you need to watch out for.

It takes you less time than it should to bore holes through the new posts to fit the rails, the Colonel kept a hoard of tools, all meticulously maintained and organized. This is the first time you’ve had to replace a post and the appropriate drill bit was tagged with a notation as to its appropriateness for the task. You’re not going to cry over a bit of a handwritten note that was clearly left for you. You’re not. What is _with_ you today?

You get the fence back up well before dark and you have no idea if it’s important or not, but every fencepost on the property is capped with a branded mark of the Colonel’s, so you get a campfire started in a very carefully cleared section of damp earth lined with rocks and you heat his brand until the heat makes the air wavy above it and you stamp the two new posts so they match the rest. You douse the fire very thoroughly, do the same for the brand, and get Val, the equipment, and yourself back up the hill well before dark. You check on your guest and get a bit of weeding in, make French toast and salad for dinner and even fry up some Dave-unapproved bacon. Alas, it’s the last of your smuggled meat and you’re going to have to make a grocery run.


	3. Where Striders Come From

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Backstory

When she was thirty-eight, Abuelita crossed the desert with her daughter, one day to be your mother, on her back. She came into this country on her two feet, walking tirelessly, leaving behind her family, leaving behind one bad place for one where she often wasn’t welcome. She crossed the desert and didn’t die and when she was asked her name, she said _Strider_.

This is the story as you know it. You don’t remember your mother. What you do remember is Abuelita, who had a spine of iron and fed and trapped stray cats and released spiders and wasps safely outside and hunted scorpions ruthlessly. You remember her sternness and her smiles and you remember feeling safe. Secure. Loved. Your child-self would not have articulated it so, but through the haze of time-washed memories you can unravel your reasoning. Above, God watched everyone and on the firmament Abuelita ordered her tiny house meticulously and fed all the neighbor kids with even greater kindness than the stray cats and held your hand crossing the street and taught you to _never_ write in library books. There were Rules. Everything was Right.

When you were seven, Abuelita fell and ended up in a facility until she died shortly thereafter of a broken heart. They told you it was complications from her hip, but you visited her every time you could convince someone to take you and the building felt like a giant soul-sucking trap, like a human-sized roach motel.

It smelled like industrial cleaners and bulk lotions, like despair, nothing at all like Abuelita’s cooking or her soap or the books she would read to you, nothing at all like _her_. Each visit she seemed smaller until the bed and walls and fake wood dresser and fake flowers just consumed her. You know that that’s not what happened, but that’s what your memories of it insist. Even now you fear that smell. You fear helplessness and failure far more than death.

When you ended up in a long-term foster home, you didn’t just grieve, you felt like you had been exiled to a foreign planet. You were luckier than you could have been, very lucky actually, but you cannot blame your seven year old self for feeling otherwise.

You had been exported from the city to a ranch where the closest neighbors were miles away and the closest grocery story a two hour round trip. The alien leaders were your new foster parents, sometimes unsmiling but not unkind, and the rest of the natives were all cows and horses and other foster kids, all alone in your introverted orbits. Denise homeschooled you, you and the three others, all older, and if you had had a place to go, you could have left at any time without missing anyone. It wasn’t a terrible place. It just wasn’t home. But then you were assigned to help feed, water, and groom the horses and you found yourself _entranced_.

There was something compelling about the horses. There still is. You liked their animal bulk and their smell and their warmth on a cold morning. You liked their soft noses, the tickle of their whiskers, their prehensile lips, their eloquent ears. You liked the clean lines of their silhouettes, and the bones and sinews of their legs, and the logic of a correctly trimmed hoof meeting the ground or rising from it, and the proud flag of their tails when they ran.

You liked their grace and their sudden turns when they played. You liked the interplay of their muscles when they worked and the little spots by their eyes that pulsed as they chewed. You liked forcing your mind to watch their legs hit the ground in different orders at different gaits. It was like trying to count fan blades when a ceiling fan was running, but a hundred times better.

You liked that you might not understand them, but they didn’t lie. You liked their eagerness to be fed and their willingness to go along with directions from someone they outweighed by more than a factor of ten. All the foster kids had chores, Evan, the oldest at seventeen, rode the fences all the time on an ATV before coming back for dinner and homework and endless guitar abuse, but you realized early on that you were the only one that would have willingly stayed in worse places, just for the horses.

Roger showed you how to be your own discipline, showed each of you, how to cut the air with a training blade or force your mind to stillness with exhaustion. He wasn’t demonstrative, but he was fair, predictable, even-tempered. He expected a lot of you, of all of you, and you grew to meet his expectations.

Denise showed you how to listen to others, how to move around horses, how not to alarm them, how not to put yourself or others in danger. It made sense. It made more sense than people. All four of you fosters seemed to be a bit slow in the people department.

Grooming is meditative to you. There’s a sort of childlike joy every time you pick a hoof and clear away the debris and reveal the perfect hidden triangle of the frog, like one of those hidden pictures, the answer to a riddle, everything back in the right place.

From feeding and grooming you advance to riding. From riding you advance to helping further out on “the range”, fence repair, cutting injured animals out for treatment. Most of it can be done just fine with machines. Some of it’s just better with horses. You might not be old enough to understand nostalgia. You might not be articulate enough yet to question if it’s some sort of ancestral memory, but there’s something that just _fits_. This is a place you _belong_ , and the only thing missing is Abuelita.

You spend a long time early on thinking about death, worried about what comes next, worried about what happened to your grandmother, a woman who never backed down, never stopped working, never stopped telling you how proud she was. She had strong hands, even to almost the end, hands that had picked you up even when you were too big at six, hands that cooked and hugged and traced out the words as she read them so you could follow.

She _deserved better_ and you don’t understand why a good person could be taken like that, it is a yawning chasm in your nightmares. If it is unfair, than everything might be unfair, if nothing is fair, what is to keep everything from just falling apart? You are just precocious enough at seven to mire yourself in all the deep philosophical questions that never get answered, but at seven you are too young to understand that some things don’t have answers, and it is a source of great distress, ongoing nightmares and strange panics.

Denise and Rodger are Christian, but not Catholic. If you make the hour long ride into town, you still can’t light a candle for Abuelita at their church. If even Church is different, is God different in each church? If there’s more than one God, which one’s in charge? Whose answer is final? There are too many questions and the only things that make sense are the horses.

At eight and nine and ten and eleven and onward, you learn how to explain what you want to an eleven hundred pound animal with the intelligence of a small child and a lifetime of hidden experience to which you are not privy. You learn what you can ask of different individuals, this one sensitive and fast, that one slow and more steady, this one afraid of umbrellas, that one that hates and fears dogs.

In the ensuing years you grow fascinated with dressage, with its balancing, its secret language of bodies moving, its history. You read all the books you can find every time someone swings by the library, apply what you can. The quarter horses don’t need to jump much, it’s not like you’re riding to the hounds in jolly old England, but the flexibility and communication don’t hurt anything the way jumping can tax joints, and Munch at least seems to enjoy it. Anyone can get bored without stimulation. Dressage is a solution for you both.

Soon enough you take on a bit of training, gentle and start a few young horses for intermediate riders that don’t want to start their horses from scratch, polish a few started horses. A banker pays you to train up his daughter’s little Arab, a sweet eager mare with nice gaits who collects like a dream. She’s nice when you get her, and better by the time she leaves. You feel a tiny bit like your heart is breaking when the trailer hauls away, but none of the horses are yours. The banker pays you a bonus and it covers a lot of online courses and the even more expensive credits. The daughter sends you a victorious clipping from the paper every once in a while, at least until you leave. You order library books on acupressure and Munch lets you practice on him. Sometimes Denise or José do too.

Denise bought you the James Herriot chapter books, one at a time, starting when you were almost eight and had finally caught on to how amazing reading is. She knew you better than you did in some ways, and, in the retrospective manner that becoming a parent gave you, you appreciate her more now than you did then. Your foster parents are religious, but not pushy about it. You didn’t tell them that your internal mantra was sometimes WWJHD. There are worse role models for a kid on a farm and far worse ports in a storm of existential uncertainty.

*

You aged out of the system at 18 with $1,672.35 to your name, a high school diploma, two years of online pre-reqs in math and all the basic sciences, and a crateful of books. Also three foster brothers and two foster parents, though only Denise was so forward as insist that you call or write.

‘Women,’ Dean assures you from his lofty perch as an MIT senior on a full scholarship, ‘are different.’ You learn soon enough that it’s more likely _you_ are.

Maybe you should have tried harder to finish a degree before you had to worry about housing, or you should have submitted all your college applications before you left home, but there are only so many hours in the day, even when you’re only sleeping for six of them, and you couldn’t decide on just one field, even with Dean trying to lure you into aeronautical engineering. Engineers can make good money, and you’re pretty sure you could have made it, it wouldn’t have been _bad_. You could have worked a year and applied a little late. You could have stayed with Denise and Rodger. They wouldn’t have kicked you out.

Instead you get two and a half jobs and half a room with five other guys splitting rent on a two bedroom apartment, and you try to save up for college and/or vocational training and/or a mystical road trip that will explain to you what to do with your life. You don’t care for the noise, but none of your roommates are psychos, so it evens out. At least you’re not the two splitting the foldout couch every night. All their stuff is in milk crates and you have half a closet.

You move around a bit, jobs and apartments both, and you think you’ve finally figured it out. You like animals, and you’re smart. And you no longer feel at home in the city or with all these people. You get a tiny one room apartment on the second-to-last floor of a sky rise, a job to pay the bills, and a job at the local vet’s. You start researching schools. WWJHD.

You don’t have much experience, but you’re not afraid of mess and know how to shut up and watch, or ask questions as necessary. There’s a quiet internal voice that squees over all of it. Also, there are kittens. Tiny proto-killers covered in fuzz. Tiny teeth, tiny squeaks, tiny claws. The puppies are almost as awesome, but a lot louder.

You learn plenty, and apply to schools, and occasionally one of the vets that does large animals will take you out on a call when they need help. You see a lot of sick and hurt animals and it’s bad, but you’re there to help. The pets have names, as do the horses. The cows and sheep have numbers. Sometimes there’s a hand-raised lamb that’s a pet or barn cats that are their duty. You still eat meat, but you wonder a bit about who it was previously.

The local SPCA puts out a call for more sets of hands sorting a hoarding situation and you find out what cat hell is like. Some of them, most of them, are so sick and terrified that you kind of hate people. Then you see that everyone else feels that way and it’s not better, but it’s survivable. You know most of the cats are going to be put down. They smell like shit, piss, and terror. They deserved better.

Increasingly, the trips out to the suburbs and country feel like breaths of air, no matter how manure-fragranced, and the trips back in like the sky is being closed away from you, but you have a goal, so it’s all good. You’re saving up, and soon you’ll be working toward a career. You’ve got most of your essays together and several people at the vet’s have promised to be references. You pay the fees and send in your college applications and you wait.

Everything changes when someone leaves an honest-to-God itty-bitty baby in a blanket in a basket outside your apartment door. You don’t know when they left him, but it’s 11:47 pm and you need to be up in five hours.

You’re going to do the right thing. The right thing is taking him somewhere safe, like a police station, so they can identify him and see if anyone’s looking for him. Texas’s safe haven laws cover babies up to two months at any emergency medical provider or child welfare agency. You are emphatically neither and have no idea why someone just left chibi café au lait Moses with you.

The baby’s hungry, not screaming, just this sort of whine like the puppies the staff have been raising and you figure, you’ve fed baby birds and not choked them, how hard can it be? So you call Ty’lesha on the second floor and she opens up the co-op on the ground floor and you end up with some sort of organic goat’s milk instead of powdered formula. It’s pasteurized, that’s the important thing. The baby seems happy enough and he’s no longer grizzling at your chest. His eyes are dark and you are short of sleep and you think he might be hypnotizing you. 

Then there are burp ups and diaper changes and bathing, both you and the little man, and you’re not afraid of shit but there’s no way you can launder these cloth diapers at the laundromat. It’s a good thing you’re going to do the right thing, just as soon as you’re done cleaning up…

You fall asleep on the floor with the baby back in his basket. You wake up early enough the next day that you can turn your alarm off, but you still end up doing the feed, burp, clean, and change routine. You’ve also sacrificed one of your few dishtowels to keep the munchkin in the style to which he is accustomed.

It’s still early, but you leave a message for Carmen, your old social worker, and call work to tell them you’ll be late. They don’t object because they aren’t in yet. Or maybe they won’t mind. You’ve never taken any time off, so you don’t know how they feel about it. You don’t bother to call out at the vet because you figure this can’t take more than a few hours. You are more naïve than you know.

You take the bus to the police station, and sacred pony gods bless Carmen, because she meets you there. For eight pounds of baby, there are four pounds of paperwork. You’ve seen thousands of pounds of livestock on the hoof change hands on a page or two.

You’re filling out reports of finding him, and attesting that he’s not yours, and you already feel bad for the little dude, because maybe he’s young enough to get adopted but that doesn’t guarantee that he’ll get the parent(s) he would have picked. Then again, who does? Someone picked _you_ and you need to know _why_. You also want to shake them, because _what the fuck?!_ There was no letter, no “free to a good home”, no “his name is”, no clue beyond a basket that could be bought in any craft store and the oddity (is it an oddity?) that the clothing, blanket, and diapers are all 100% cotton with no labels on them. Okay, so the blanket has red stripes. You are still clueless.

Carmen is a nice lady, middle-aged now, still no-nonsense but good humored. She keeps her hair pulled back and you’ve known each other for twelve years. There’s pretty much no one else that you’d bitch to about, “what good is wrapping it when someone leaves their kid on your doorstep? I don’t even have a welcome mat. I’m gay as a purple glitter pony. What if no one wants him? Fuck.”

You’ve had three hours of sleep and the police officers don’t believe you and maybe someone’s a druggie or just nuts, but _maybe someone entrusted you with their child_. You may be a tiny bit hysterical, behind your carefully blank face, because if Roger’s robotaton sun-leathered face taught you one thing, it’s that there’s something to be said for faking it until you make it. Not that Roger ever told you he would miss you. Denise spilled the beans.

You want to call them and ask what they were thinking when they signed themselves up to deliberately foster their own personal herd of high-functioning maybe-autistics and then set you each free on the unsuspecting universe. Calving season _did not prepare you for this_.

You don’t even know what you want. Carmen clucks her tongue and pats you on the back and tells you that you’re a good man, and that you’ve done what you need to do, and that what you do next is up to you. She’s four feet ten, but when you’re sitting with your head between your knees she can pat your back just fine.

Carmen drove ninety minutes each way on each of her visits to the ranch and she always had time to listen to you talk about horses, to listen to Evan talk about becoming a rock star, or Dean obsess over model airplanes, or José deliberate between becoming a dentist or a missionary (he’s since decided to be practical and do both – it’s easier to contemplate what God wants when you’re not nursing an abscess). She’s always been a good listener and you may have been her job then, but you’re not now. You think that makes her something like a friend. Evan’s a sound tech now, and Dean works for Boeing, and José’s still in school. You’re the youngest and first to enter highly unqualified parenthood.

Maybe things could have gone differently. Maybe you were doomed as soon as you looked Dave in his big unfocused eyes. Carmen helps you plan. She reminds you that it’s a big commitment, that you don’t have to do this, and if you do this, you don’t have to be alone. You don’t _really_ think of it as doomed.

Getting custody of Dave is even harder than making the decision to try, _everyone_ wants babies, or at least that’s what “they” tell you. You don’t know if you’re more bitter on his behalf that he’s just dark enough to potentially reduce the playing field, or more relieved that you may have less competition. On paper, _everyone_ is a better prospect for a parent, but you know that no one will ever love and protect him the way you will. He is so delicate, so alive, so strangely _beautiful_. Babies are some weird alien overlords, like how could anyone consider them _not_ repugnantly squishy and wet? You can’t turn away. How could you ever forget him if he were to go to someone else that might not _understand_ and you never saw him again?

Carmen turns out to be some sort of fairy godmother, and you are not blind to the fact that she’s not just helping you with the process, she’s staked her rep on you by acting as a character witness. By the time you do have full, finished, stamped-done custody, it’s almost two years later and Dave weighs almost twenty pounds and you’ve probably done about twice his bodyweight in paperwork. You’ve also learned several wiccan cleansing rituals and know all the co-op staff by name.

At two, you’re still changing diapers but you’ve recently introduced Dave to the concept of bribery. He gets paid in berries when he does his business in the potty-chair like a big boy. You cannot wait for full-on housebreaking to be complete.  You sometimes have fantasies of putting him out to pasture to do his business and stop messing the nest. Kids are expensive.

Also expensive? Buying a washer and dryer and paying for a plumber and electrician to officially install them. ‘Cause your little princess can’t tolerate anything but organic cotton and natural soaps and the laundry service you tried _also_ made him break out in hives. You convince the building super to approve the installations by virtue of visiting him at dinnertime with a full load of unwashed diapers. This is the first and last time you employ The Devastating Diaper Gambit. It is very, very efficient and should only ever be employed as The Last Resort. You bake the guy cookies as an apology but you’re not sure if he was into chocolate after that.

Through the whole adoption thing, and after, you sort of cede administration to Carmen and the demands of Dave’s biological processes and development, drop one and a half jobs and take a more hours at the last one, get signed up for daycare. The city still feels smothering, but Dave is bundle of potential, a sponge that soaks up new things (and secretes shit) and there’s a small park you can walk to where a few pigeons will eat your sandwich crusts and provide free entertainment. Kids love animals. Also, free is good.

You drop thoughts of going back to school and you immerse yourself in finding baby wash that doesn’t cause contact dermatitis. You pick up a few hours at the co-op to get the employee discount. Organic shit is expensive.


	4. How Jakob Harley Bought The Farm, And Dirk Strider Inherited It

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Happy memories, and also sad ones.

You meet the Colonel at a festival, free but for the bus ride, you with your two and a half year old brother-son-charge in tow, this week down to one low-grade rash courtesy of sage-ing his right shoe and getting interrupted before you got to his left. The new shoes are red, Dave’s favorite color, and made of soft leather, courtesy of a friend-of-a-friend at the co-op. They are currently Dave’s most prized possession as he has not yet caught on to the amazing that is _Bonny’s Big Day_ or _King of the Wind_. Dave keeps skipping to show them off and stopping to itch at his left foot when he thinks you’re not looking. You’ve got a backpack with a thermos, food, and back up pull-ups because as much as you want to introduce him to disgusting deep-fried anything fair food, you know it can only end in misery.

The Colonel came with his granddaughter, of similar age to Dave, and a two horse hitch to give rides. Technically it’s advertising for a small brewing company in Washington, but the logo is tasteful and it’s not like the kids really notice. They’re on a festival-hopping trip across country. The Colonel tells you that he wants to show Jade a bit of this part of the world. You don’t tell him that you doubt she’s going to remember much of it. He’s very enthusiastic and you don’t want to stomp on that. Also, you’re a bit envious because it sounds like fun. You’re life consists of work, Dave, work, food, and the inevitable output from the last. A road trip, even with a kid with some accommodation needs, sounds amazing.

Dave is instantly smitten with the huge gray Percheron mares, Valiant and Gallant, their soft noses and deep eyes, the jingle of their harness, and something in you smells their clean coats and the scent of leather soap and it’s the sad smell of home, because you can’t go there. You are less instantly, but quite insistently fascinated and fond of the Colonel and his granddaughter. He invites you to visit them in Washington. It might as well be the moon. You talk for a while and exchange contact information but expect no more to come of it. You discounted one thing. Colonel Jakob English is not a quitter.

He writes you letters and you write back. He calls you to chat, or to hand the phone to Jade so she can tell you something that makes no sense, but is clearly earth shatteringly important to her. You know Jade’s latest developments and he knows how Dave’s found yet another thing to be allergic to, and he tells you about his farm and his three pairs of draft horses and how he could do with some help. You talk horses and while driving is not dressage, it’s also not barrel racing or rodeos, and he’s a font of information of all sorts. In retrospect, he treats you a bit like you would have an unbroken horse. Respectful. Showing you he can be trusted. Open to being approached, waiting for you to make the first move.

He calls you one evening when you most need it, on a night when Dave is finally sleeping, sweaty and wrung out, his perspiration-sticky cheek hot against your chest, his snotty breaths precious. The both of you are scared after the latest smog-induced asthma attack, and when you don’t really want to talk, Jake just tells you about the weather in Washington, the smell of the ocean on the coastal winds, the smell of the forest and fields. He reminds you how much you miss open sky and you wonder if ragweed and dust are worse than smog. He makes much ado about getting older. He’s in his seventies but doesn’t look it. He can toss hay bales and hoist harness like anyone.

When he flat out asks you if you would move in and help, sends you an offer with health insurance and salary and social security deductions all enumerated, sends you pictures of the farm and the horses, pictures of Jade’s room, and Dave’s, and one for you, empty but for furniture, you realize that Carmen isn’t your only friend in the world and that maybe you should write to her when you leave, just like you send Denise updates on Dave every few months and Denise tells you how your foster brothers and Munch are.

(Rodger has thrown his back out and has taken up braiding hackamores during his recovery. Evan is in Europe somewhere after one of the bandwagons he hopped finally made it across the pond. José is still in school. Dean is romancing another engineer at work and Denise is waiting for either a wedding invite or a shotgun birth announcement any day now. You tell her not to hold her breath, Dean isn’t one for social niceties, she should just call him. You can hear her roll her eyes over the phone. Becoming a parent has initiated you into a new world in which you now know your parents as fallible people and not just authority figures. It’s freaky. It does not bode well. You’re just going to have to be better for Dave.)

Maybe if the Colonel had been a decade or two younger, or you a similar amount older, you might have been more than very close friends, that active mind and spirit offering a different kind of partnership. It doesn’t matter. He and Jade become family.

He shows you the ropes regarding working horses in harness, shows you plowing and haying and logging by horse, each of his mares lovely and strong in her own way and when you start Val on dressage he buys a matched set of yearling Friesians, “to keep you busy, old boy”. The bill of sale has your name on it as their new owner. They are very pretty and the youngest things on the farm, chickens excluded. Perhaps Dave and Jade are more rambunctious, but they also weigh a great deal less. The Colonel may as well have given you a matched set of unicorns. You name them Maude and Mable because they sound like sensible names and you’re half afraid that you’re imagining them.

It’s like every dream of your child-self has come true, on top of every dream of your adult-self. The air is so clean you sometimes pinch yourself. Dave goes weeks and months and finally years without another asthma attack, until you still keep an inhaler up to date, just in case, but you finally think you can exhale. You do the ladder work and anything that needs a bit more muscle than Jake ought to be supplying, despite his protests. You let him keep his dignity and don’t argue about most of his self-appointed tasks. You don’t feel like you’re a charity case, you feel like he needs you, even if it’s just to keep an eye on his wild-child-beast of a grandchild when he needs a breather. He becomes your mentor.

The farm’s a sort of hobby, the Colonel grows sugar pumpkins, among other things, raspberries and vegetables and herbs, all organic since long before it became a thing, and much of it goes back to the brewing company and its strange concoctions. Neither of you have any interest in canning, but late spring to fall the counters and fridge are full of fresh food, and in winter you can still dig cherries and whatnot out of the freezer. For once you don’t have to check labels because Dave can eat pretty much anything grown on the farm, short of the grass.

You relearn riding and then a few tricks besides. The Colonel introduces you to Renfaires, which he loves unabashedly, and, because he seems to know people in all sorts of places, he introduces you to the Chevalry troop.

The Chevies run jousting and horseback melodramas, kidnapping Lady Hysterica so Prince Charming can rescue her, kidnapping Prince Charming so that Princess Proficientia can rescue him, etc. They are a welcoming and funny group with a double handful of past broken bones and a few stupid ideas you can’t help but try. (Harnessing Val and Gal together and trotting or cantering them around with a foot planted on each of their backs? A complete rush, better than any motorcycle rumbling under you, the closest you’ll ever get to surfing. Watching your friend and mentor engage in the same stupidity? _Terrifying_. You don’t care if it’s hypocritical, this gets labeled ‘NOPE’ and filed under ‘Never Happening Again’.) You might pick up a few bucks over the next few years promenading Maude and Mable with their gorgeous long manes and tails and gleaming hides through a bit of horsey ballet, you run Val through more than a few scripted jousts, but you mostly do it for the company, and okay, for the admiration. Dave and Jade think you are _amazing_.

Jade clearly learned to stand by pulling herself up one of Val’s legs. Dave starts to learn to ride around four by climbing a fence and clucking to Val until she slides close enough to let him scramble up. She lets him direct where she walks and ignores him when he tries to get her do more than that, drops him off at a fence when she’s tired of him. You still write to Carmen, but these are two things you neglect to relay.

The Colonel buys two ancient Shetlands, aka four legged armchairs, so the kidlets can learn without breaking themselves into cutlets on the drop. The ponies will trot with sufficient harassment but treat the concept of cantering or jumping or panicking of any kind with all the grave evaluation of the newly christened Fin McCool reading the Kama Sutra. That is to say all three are utterly irrelevant to their world view.

Val’s partner Gallant passes one night, peacefully, and you try to explain what death is to a five year old. Jade tells Dave that Gallant is living in the Summerlands now and she’ll never ache on cold mornings again.

It is somehow easier than when Denise called you to let you know that Munch had to be put down. Poor Buttmunch, even as an older gelding he never could pass up sticking his nose in some mare’s business and he finally slipped when he tried to make his escape from his latest affront. You’d like to imagine that the Summerlands have room for even an ugly broom-tailed gelding who never let a good grooming go by without scrunching his nose in happiness. Maybe he got his balls back. Who knows.

Poke arrives through a long string of people-who-know-people. Skinny and skittish from a neglectful home, she learns to expect carrots and soft words from the Colonel but it’s you who teaches her how nice it feels to get at all the itches until she comes to you when she sees or hears you. It takes months, and in some ways, years, but soon enough you have taught her good manners on the ground, in harness, and under saddle. The Colonel jokes about commissioning a gypsy caravan and Jade sees to it that he pays up, or rather, that you do.

The covered wagon takes you almost a year to finish, with the kids picking the colors at the end. You’ve never worked in wood much before, it’s different from metal and plastic. Wood still breathes even after it’s cut and dried, it swells and subsides with humidity, it has orientations set by how it grew, just like horses and people carry their pasts with them, and you have to account for that in your calculations. You find it fascinating and frustrating. It’s not very much like building a fence or assembling a furniture kit.

The Colonel carves some of the scraps into figures and toys and gifts you with a whittling knife too, not that you couldn’t have purchased one with the wages he pays. He carves trolls with two horns, trolls with four horns and wicked smiles, strong merman, sinewy sirens, selkies half in their skins, mountain lions with patterns in their coats. All your carvings look like so much tinder. You never could draw.

Dave and Jade have lines of the Colonel’s pieces along their shelves and window sills. He lets them demand new things and Jade gets a lady centaur in zebrawood, complete with drawn arrow, polished and unpainted. You know that a good quarter or more of the surface is polish and the Colonel sported band-aids on his fingers for a week after he made it, but you don’t think Jade makes the connection. You only figured it out because you tried carving one of the scraps. Dave gets a mahogany unicorn, polished and wood-burned to a deeper brown with dapples shining through, built like Maude and Mable. You don’t join the exacting-requests-queue but you get a tiny gray magnolia wood Valiant nonetheless.

The Colonel covers a lot of your costs, the shared groceries, the medical coverage, the heat and electricity. He gives you a lot of gifts, all useful, or strangely appropriate, things you can’t quite bring yourself to spend your money on, always sure you’ll regret it later. You sometimes make jokes about being a kept man. Jade and Dave are still too young to get the joke, but the Colonel laughs and winks back. This is why he was Jake when you knew him and the Colonel since you failed him. Jake would have forgiven you too easily. The Colonel had been to war and could hold a grudge when necessary.

When the wagon’s done, green and red and blue and orange and purple and gold, dignity only saved by meticulous taping and outlining everything in black so it looks deliberate, Poke does look very handsome in the wagon shafts, and, even fully loaded for camping, it’s not even half a job for her to pull it. The kids spend more nights camping out there then they do inside, at least until it gets cooler.

The Colonel has a few hippy friends who come to the Renfaires and tells fortunes. They fit right in with the wagon and Poke staked out to graze scenically and when you’re not hanging with the Chevies, it’s nice to know a few other people. They make weird tea, but with sufficient sugar and straining it through your teeth, it’s good. You always get the same fortune: _you will find what you have lost_.

It should be meaningless claptrap, but it’s like asking if you left the stove on, you don’t _think_ you forgot anything, but it drives you nuts trying to remember. It creeps you out sometimes because they challenge you to ask other performance artists/faire types and they always give you the same fortune. There has to be an underground telephone game for it. They have to know how much it bothers you.

Jade loves the renfaires just as much as you and Dave do, and probably for the some of the same reasons. You like the pageantry and how you can assume a persona like everyone else, and shed it when you’re done, can enjoy the camaraderie and crowds and then leave them both behind so you aren’t overwhelmed. They take turns playing knight and princess or druid, though sometimes when Jade is the princess she rescues her knight anyway. They are freaking adorable and they keep stealing your sage to make up mystical rites. You give them a bundle of dried mint instead and tell them to go nuts. You find crumbles of mint in weird places for a while. Your work boots have smelled worse and the coffee filter strains out the crumbles with the grounds.

Bec arrives, a half-grown puppy at the barn cat’s dish one night, fluffy white fur matted, the one red ear perked, the black one flopped. Six year old Jade swiftly, irrevocably, falls in love. The half-grown puppy falls right back.

You are certain that these are the best years of your life. Nothing lasts forever, but you would pay a great deal to go back, even for a little while, or to prevent how it all fell in.  

*

You get the call at something like three in the morning from north of the border and you bundle Dave, still in in his PJs, into his coat, boots, and gloves, and you dump him with Bec into the back of the car and drive three hours on the strength of coffee and adrenalin and despair. You are careful to remember your passports and papers, a huge Maglite, a leash, snacks, a thermos, and a roll of bags for walking Bec. You are lucky to remember to get fully dressed.

You get to the site of the accident and a polite Mountie shows you where to park and gets someone to wait with Dave in the car while you climb down to identify the bodies.

The colonel and Jade had trucked Bonnie and Clyde up to a November harvest festival in British Columbia to advertise for the colonel’s pet brewing company. Dave has a cold and had been bummed not to go, but now the frantic wheeling of thoughts in your mind keeps returning to your desperate gratitude that you didn’t lose him too. You endlessly circle back to the what ifs. What if another person meant they left a few minutes later? What if Dave had been there too? What if Jade died of exposure and it could have been prevented if they had been found earlier?

You hadn’t expected them back for another day or two, but the nights are cold and the road and cliffs here are steep and something went wrong. You make your way down to wreck of the truck and trailer and note that the trailer doors are open, that blood pools from them, that there are boot prints all over the snow, but no hoof prints.

“Both horses were dead when the vehicle was discovered,” polite Mountie confirms. He doesn’t say that it was quick. There’s a lot of blood in a Clydesdale, and only so many ways that the trailer could have come apart just so to make it quick.

You don’t look into the trailer. You’re about to see what remains of the Colonel and Jade. You don’t need to replace your memories of Bonnie and Clyde, groomed and gleaming within the traces of the orange and green accented harness the kids designed for the brewing company. Your mind provides you an image of the girls in their winter blankets, now bloodstained, twisted, still. There’s something sacred to you about horses, like children. They are big and strong and willing and innocent. They shouldn’t suffer. You hope it was quick. You doubt that it was.

There’s a dead moose crumpled a few yards in front of the truck. Something’s scavenged at it. Your boots squeak more than crunch as you get to the cab door, the snow thoroughly compacted.

The Colonel is dead behind the wheel, and you can ID him without doubt. His face is bruised and the cold is a blessing in regards to the things that happen after death. He was in his eighties and you have never seen him be still before. Even sleeping he made a racket. His sister called it the Jakob Harley Unstrung Quartet. _Oh, God, you’re going to have to tell Joan._ There is no way you can fool your mind to pretend he’s sleeping. You brace yourself to look further. The passenger side and extended cab seats are empty. No stains. No Jade. Your heart rises with hope and falls again thinking of the temperatures. You turn back to polite Mountie.

“Where’s Jade?”

“Pardon?”

“Jade Harley, the Colonel’s granddaughter. She’s only ten. Where?” Your voice trails off.

Polite Mountie’s eyes widen. “Are you sure she was here?”

“She wouldn’t have been anywhere else. Did you check the trailer sleeping quarters? That would have been the best place to stay warm.” You are hoping he says no, though you can’t imagine that they overlooked it.

“Yes, we checked it. No one was there.”

“How long has it been? Since the accident?”

“At least eight hours, no more than ten. It’s cold but there’s no snow since. We don’t have any dogs with us but we should be able to look for tracks.”

He relays that they have a minor missing and a few other officers start looking for tracks, one phones it in, but despite the snow, all they can find are the boot prints around the site and animal tracks. You think about the three hours it took you to drive here and how you stupidly didn’t ask about her then, already certain of the worst. Someone relays back that the tracks around the moose include wolverine and porcupine, of all things, but no footprints. You convince them to let you try with Bec. It can’t make it worse.

You climb back up and convince Dave to stay in the car as you get Bec out. Dave knows something is wrong, he can probably guess what, but the lump in your throat can’t tell him. You leash Bec and he lets you bring him down the slope. He whines before you can see the wreck, and you imagine that even with the cold he can smell it. You bring him up to the cab and open the door on the passenger side. He looks at the colonel’s body and his head dips. He looks at you and you could swear he understands what death is.

“Bec. Find Jade.” This has always been a game, doggy hide-and-seek, but now the stakes are more than just a tackle and a laugh.

His mismatched, always-lax ears snap taut and you know without doubt that he doesn’t just understand that the Colonel’s dead, he understands that Jade is in danger. He throws himself back from the cab so hard he scrambles and you can’t keep up with him as he casts around, so you unsnap the leash and hope you’re not being stupid.

Bec circles the wreck. He pokes his head into the open sleeping quarters and the back of the trailer. He leaves bloody footprints for a few feet until the snow cleans it off. He circles the moose and sniffs and whines and you wonder if he doesn’t understand after all, if he’s just seeing a steak in the rough, but he doesn’t try to so much as mouth it, just keeps sniffing and circling, until he takes off into the underbrush and you and Polite Mountie and another officer all run after the red and black triangles and the snowy plume of his tail. Only the red is distinct whenever he stops.

Bec clears a thicket and gets into trees and over rocks and into forest again and you notice that you’re following a set of two animal tracks and your heart sinks to know that at the end of this you won’t find Jade, just a pissed wolverine or Bec with his face full of porcupine spines. You wonder if you should try to call him off but you don’t know that you can get him to come back. Better to run until your lungs hurt and know you tried. Then, suddenly, you can see child sized boot prints among the two animal trails. Jade’s size. It doesn’t make any sense, they start in the middle of an otherwise untracked clearing and you can tell you’re not the only one who finds this weird, but the three of you follow Bec for who knows how long as the sun rises higher and you knew wolverines could hoof it, but you must be following a porcupine marathoner.

The three part trail ends at a rock face and Bec circles and whines and circles. You and Other Mountie scramble up the rock face from the other side, but you can’t find any tracks. You boost Bec up and he can’t seem to find anything else. He continues to circle to cast for the scent. He whines as he circles, more and more frantic, and finally he makes a noise you can only describe as crying. He scrambles down and scratches at the solid rock, backs up a few steps and launches himself at it, turning just in time to take the impact on his shoulder instead of his head, collapses for a moment at the foot of it. You wonder if you have honored Jade’s trust by killing her dog. Long moments pass before Bec picks himself up and limps over to you, lays down at your feet, both ears flattened, eyes shut. You can still hear his whine at the very top of your hearing range. It’s cold enough that your eyeballs already hurt with it, even without crying. You don’t care.

The trip back is easily traced and far more difficult. Bec limps the first part of it, then slows until you end up carrying him over your shoulders. His pride, usually only waived for Jade and Dave, is absent, and he doesn’t resist. His head hangs limp by your face, hot doggy breath periodically immersing your head in a cloud.

You thank the officers and break the news to Dave and you lay Bec out in the back seat. Polite Mountie helps you fill in a missing persons report for Jade and tells you that you will be contacted regarding the Colonel’s body. You thank him again and you drive home, or rather back to the Colonel’s home. You wonder who will take care of the horses, who will inherit or sell the farm. You wonder where you and Dave and Bec and this great hole of despair will go, dragging grief like a boulder. You’re a high school graduate whose only talents are homemaking, childrearing, and keeping horses. It’s hard, meticulous work, but scarcely remunerative. The colonel made enough back with a bit of farming and shares in the brewing company that the horses just about broke even. The farm itself was a genteel retirement and it hurts to think that you will not only never see them again, you will never see the familiar places where you can still imagine them. Still, no one’s likely to kick you out today, so you go home to feed the horses and try to sleep, interrupted by dreams of Jade coming home and nightmares of losing Dave.

*

The Colonel did not leave you to make your way among the vagaries of the job market alone but for all the mouths you need to feed. There’s a trust, in fact there are multiple trusts, one each for Jade’s upkeep and Dave’s, one for the farm and the horses, but effectively, he left it all to you, all entrusted to you, to maintain them all, to take care of them all. There’s a conservation easement on the farm so you don’t have to worry about sky-high taxes or even if you have to decide to keep the farm as it is. He took care of everything.

There’s even a note of apology, one of several, the sympathetic lawyer tells you. Attorney Vantas pushes the box of tissues closer to you and politely continues to scratch out notes on his yellow pad as you make use of it. Not that you know it now but in mere months his hilariously obnoxious son Sollux will be needling Dave into programming and late night gaming and in two years and eight months they’ll be sharing a cabin at summer camp for nerdlings. The distraction is good for Dave. He’s mourning, but he needs something outside that.

Right now you just blow your damn traitorous nose and try to listen when Attorney Vantas, Call-me-Tom, tells you what things mean and where to sign.

You grit your teeth as the warmth you feel to know that the Colonel trusted you as much as you trusted him fights with your failure to find Jade.

*

The After is different. There is a Before Dave and an After Dave. There is a Before Jake and an After Jade-and-The-Colonel. You yourself are no longer who you were. Are you imagining it that the horses are waiting? If they are, it’s probably for Bonnie and Clyde, their absent herd mates.

The only one who seems the same is Fin and you know it’s irrational anthropomorphization to think that he’s more careful to wait until you or Dave are done talking before he retreats to his lair. If he blows you a bubble before he hides away, it might be coincidence that he does it almost every time now. It’s not really a little fish kiss like you tell Dave, but what’s the harm in taking comfort where you can?


	5. Fae 101 from the Mer in Cowboy Boots

It’s one week and six days after you repaired the fence and you haven’t seen or heard any evidence of things that go bump and slurp in the night, but you still inspect the pasture and creek and fences every morning.

This morning everyone but Poke’s standing in the brook. Val’s rubbing her head against the boulder that makes for a nice basking rock, except that you’re never letting Dave down here to swim unsupervised again. You’ll be in a rad flying wheelchair by the time you let him out of your sight down here. You get a bit closer and realize it’s not the rock that’s holding her attention, but a new visitor. 

Your new visitor is either clearly related to Dan or all nixies have a thing for black and purple. You can hear him/her/them speaking softly to Val and you can’t hear what’s said but you think better of them for it.

You get to the bottom of the hill and Val looks up and nickers at you. The figure straightens a bit but doesn’t try to flee. He resumes rubbing Val’s ears and she resumes ignoring you.

“Yo,” the possibly mythical creature tosses out.

“Are you a nixie too?”

“Kid told you they’re a nixie?”

“Was it untrue?”

“Not really. Wasn’t the whole truth though, what is? Most a the fae are shapeshifters a some sort, even if it’s just a glamour ta make you think they’re something different. Might be a nix or a nixie at the moment. Head back out into the ocean she’ll be a mer soon enough. Or he. Might change her mind on that too.”

Okay, gender assumptions torpedoed. You’d still peg this one as probably male but it seems that “Dan, boy or girl?” has been answered with “yes, but just wait”. You’ve never considered yourself a particularly intuitive people person, so you’re going to give yourself a pass and move on.

“What’s the difference? Besides fresh or salt water?” Yup, not touching the him/her thing, moving on.

“Iffn ya stay long enough in some place, a nix will get territorial like, want to keep the water clean, drive out other fae beasties, might take offense if someone tosses a bit a rubbish in their territory. Mers might or might not be social, but the fresh water can only support so many. Plenty a nix play an instrument an sing or somewhat, but I’ve never heard naught but singing in the ocean. Guess that makes me a bit more nix than mer.” The older version of Dan pats something on the rock that might be a violin case. Or it might be a stingray, you can’t quite make it out and it’s not like you know much about normal in your new paradigm. He continues with a shrug.

“Either might drown someone or save someone drowning, that’s all on _who_ and not wwhat.”

You decide to ignore that part. “So is it _determined_ by environment or do nix and mers just sort themselves into the right places?”

“Yes.”

“That doesn’t really answer anything.”

“Are you an introvert or an extrovert because of nature or nurture?”

“Okay, fair enough. Are you naturally this talkative, or are you just short on conversational partners?”

“Short on partners of all sorts.” He lifts a brow and winks, _flexes his tail_. You laugh, a short bark that you didn’t exactly give yourself permission to emit, but it _was_ funny, deliberately smarmy, complete with a little hum and once over of your own jeans-and-tee-shirt-clad form.

“Are you a drowning type?”

He laughs. “If I was, I wouldn’t tell you unless you tricked it out of me. But for what it’s worth, no. You can call me Cronus, or Caleb if you prefer.”

“Cronus. That seems to set a bad precedent.”

He shrugs, a sort of full body movement that ends with a casual tail flip. “I’m a lovver, not a fighter. Guess dear old Da wanted _something_ about me to be fierce. But I’m not here to eat Danny if that’s what you’re asking. I’m not their Da anyhow, more of a brother or cousin or something. I’m all sorts a civilized - don’t bite unless you _ask_.”

His lip curls like an Elvis impersonator, and a low rumble hums in the air between you for a moment. It is unmistakable as anything but a come on and reminds you of both sailors and sirens. The flex and draw of his muscles look a bit more honest than supernatural beastie magical physique alone seems likely to support. You don’t think you could free yourself if he had you in the water and wanted otherwise. Not unless you had a knife, and maybe not even then.

“Or something?”

“Just because Danny doesn’t remember the before doesn’t mean I don’t. Grown up some, out of children’s dresses, but we’ve been like this a long time and that one’s not done growing yet. The fae don’t grow fast, when they grow at all.” His face is more solemn than you’ve seen yet and you wonder how old he is. He, you think he’s a he, hasn’t really resolved the whole pronoun thing. It wasn’t that long ago that all small children wore dresses.

“‘Before’. ‘They’. You’re dropping hints like breadcrumbs. What’s the catch?”

“Maybe I just want someone to talk to.” His voice is light again and his smile invites you to dismiss everything as flirting.

“You don’t know me from Adam. Why me?”

“I like your ladies. Damn dignified dames. No one has drafts anymore for anything but horse piss beer commercials. And yeah, you might have noticed I like to talk. Been following Danny for a while and it gets lonely being spurned by the one person for whom you constantly drop everything. Found the group she’s been hanging with and they told me of their wild rides and sudden Jenny problem and that they left her behind when she fell covering their asses, flighty kids. Took a while to find the right tributary. Had to wait for Ol’ Jen to settle in for the night before I sang her down and gave her something to chew on. Was darker than the Night Empress’s tits last night.”

He rubs a thumb over his fisted knuckles and you notice the gleam of dark metal over every finger as more than just a detail. It’s not fancy. In fact, it looks a lot like a set of horseshoe nail rings, doubled sets, four in a row like a set of brass knuckles. He’s got bruises and scratches on his hands, but nowhere else that you can see. It makes his crown of horns, a larger set in the same shape as Dan’s, look more serious, less like a fashion statement and more like an armament.

“That thing. Unjolly Giant Green Maw. Is it gone?”

“That one’s dead, so the name won’t go attracting it, call it what you like. Fence is fixed, so that’s fine, protection’s back in place, nothing malevolent can get through ‘til there’s a break in it by something that doesn’t count as malevolent.”

What does that even mean? Malevolent by whose determination?

“How’d you know that the fence was down?”

“I remembered this place. It’s been a sanctuary before. Just haven’t been here for a few decades. Places to go. Bratty little sibs to clean up after. The Colonel?”

“Dead.”

“Damn. The old boy knew how to party. I’m sorry to have missed the sendoff. His sister?”

“Lives about an hour away.”

“Dear Joan. Her scones are like rocks but her gingerbread and company are without compare. Any chance that she lives near water?”

“I suspect not.”

He sighs. “Don’t suppose I can cage an invite up the hill?” He flutters his lashes and he’s not nearly so good at it as Dan, which is and isn’t a shame.

Just because Dave’s at summer camp and it’s the first time in your life that you are both legally an adult and not legally responsible for a minor, doesn’t mean you need to go out and pick up a date. It just would have been nice to have the _option_.

You don’t care how aggressive Dan is about it, or how old he/she is on a technicality, you can’t justify playing house as long as you think of them as a minor, the very idea makes you _angry_ , as if some adult were perving on Dave, or Jade, or any kid. You eye Cronus/Caleb and you can appreciate those muscles on more than an aesthetic basis now that your internal shoulder angel has stamped his hand with ‘of legal age’.

Maybe he’s trouble. Or maybe he’ll swat Dan out of the melodramatic you-don’t- _understand_ -me funk that has consumed the past two days as she(?) healed enough to pass the boredom event horizon and encroach on the territorial perimeter of whining-license-revoked-seriously-stop-kid-you’re-killing-me-I-know-everyone-feels-like-no-one-understands-but-for-the-love-of-God’s-little-green-apples- _STOP_. Kid’s got very powerful lungs and great stamina. 10/10 would enter in the whine Olympics synchronized swim. Another audience for the all-you-can-eat drama-llama finals? He is _welcome_ in your humble abode. Jury’s still out on if he’s allowed in the stable or near Dave.

“There’s no way I’m carrying you.”

“Are you calling me fat?” The tone is deliberately shocked and you wonder how much popular culture he’s imbibed that this conversation isn’t stranger than it is.

“If the shoe fits.”

“And now you’re making fun of my fucking handicap. You’re a rude son of projectile weapon and I think I like you. You must give Danny _fits_.”

He clucks to Val and tugs her halter until she squares up along the rock. He slides over and onto her back, pulling the case behind him, and winds a hand in her mane, hums a bit. His torso and arms are lined with muscle and his back is straight, tail circled under himself and back to the left, a prim and proper naked merman riding sidesaddle minus the saddle. He has a long fin down his spine and slashes of opercula along both sides of his ribcage. There’s a knotwork tattoo spanning his shoulder blades and sprawling down to points to both sides of his dorsal fin.

Val picks her way back up the bank and lunges up the hill. He leans forward but doesn’t otherwise slide. You get a stellar view of merbutt, all muscles and the shine of scales, a shade darker than Dan. You can’t see that he’s giving her any commands, if he’s exercising some sort of waterbaby mojo, or if she just decided to head in the direction he said he wanted to go. You walk up after them and wonder how you’re going to get him in the house. You suppose you could try a wheelbarrow. You’d even be nice and use the fresh shavings one and not the manure mover.

You jog up the rest of the hill and when you catch up, there’s no longer a merman, but just some regular, if handsome, Joe, standing by Val and tickling her lower lip. He’s shirtless, but has somehow acquired a pair of well-worn jeans and gaterhide cowboy boots, less dude ranch than they could be, no spurs or tips. The fins are gone, the tattoo seems smaller, and the weirdest thing about him is those definitely-not-just-blue eyes. With his shoulder length hair in wet disarray and his lopsided smile, you wonder if he’s really some Fabio waiting for the photographer for a supermarket checkout romance cover. The case seems bigger, guitar-sized now, strangely slick, and he has a strap slung over one shoulder.

*

Threat estimate as concluded several days later: he eats like a bottomless pit and likes country music way too much, but he’s still more polite than Dan.

*

You whip up dinner just a few hours after Cronus and Dan finish off the rest of your sandwich supplies: BBQ chicken, which you can’t eat when Dave’s around because the kid caught some form of no-face vegetarianism, you have no idea where it came from, though okay, maybe the naming the chickens years ago _was a terrible_ _idea_ , and carrots with hummus, ‘cause you’re a dude with a lot of horses and they’re the one vegetable no one in the house has ever argued about. You grow half an acre of them in a mix of types, enough to keep everyone in sweet crunchy taproots. Dave will seriously just go out and graze on them. You have no idea how he isn’t as orange as a WWII British flying ace.

You assign Dan peeling duty and Cronus food processer hummus duty. Dan looks envious of the whirling blades but you get her a knife to cut carrot sticks and she looks appeased. That’s probably a sign that she’s not entirely mature enough to be handling your kitchen appliances. No ice cream cranking for you, Dan-child.

Bec curls up under the table and makes unsettling noises as he tears his way through a helping of de-boned chicken and then a carrot. Guess which sounds like bones snapping. You eat your dinner ignoring the hot breath on your ankle. He won’t actually bite you unless you make it obvious that you’ve noticed him and are ignoring him. This is part of your armistice. Dignity must be maintained. Once a year there is the vet showdown, but that day is not today.

If you hadn’t already guessed by Dan’s bratty little sib act when Cronus showed up, you’d have had to be blind and deaf to not notice it when Dan curls up on Cronus’s lap and falls asleep to the sound of “Say Yes to the Dress” reruns. You chat with Cronus as he runs a hand through the kid’s thick hair and pulls the afghan off the back of the couch to ensconce his charge.

“So what else is real? Ghosts?”

“Sometimes.”

“Nessie?”

“A nixie a course.”

“The Kraken.”

“Can’t tell you.”

“Can’t or won’t or don’t know?” He shakes his head and, well, this is for amusement as much as education, you don’t plan on going to the ocean anytime soon, so you let it drop.

“Godzilla.”

“Fake.”

“Sewer alligators”

“Sad little buggers.”

“Werewolves.”

“Yup. Plenty a kinds. Some that’s gotta change with the moon, and some that’s just sometimes on two feet, sometimes four. Wolf spirits too, like all the rest a the animal spirits.”

“Rest of?”

“If there’s a form of life, there’s probably a spirit of it. Like, there’s raccoon spirits, and bear, and crawfish, deer, rabbits, mice, bees and the rest. There’s dozens upon dozens a mer an nix shapes alone. Wind and stone and storm too, all that, just like nix and mer are part animal an part element. Part human seeming too, though _sentience_ might be closer. And trolls as you folks call 'em. Fae that be wanting to talk and walk and have hands, but not necessarily all the time. Sorta a default, like, yeah?" You think about the troll that overwintered in your barn loft and for the first time, wonder who they were, and not just where they came from and where they went. If they wanted to talk, it wasn't with you. 

Cronus frowns as he strokes Dan’s hair back, rubs along the thin arabesques of horn like you’d check behind Dave’s ears for dirt. He licks his thumb and rubs at a bruise along Dan’s cheekbone, a spectacular fudgy shadow that didn’t bloom until day three at Casa de Strider. It made you a bit more patient with Dan in the throes of why-me-dom. The bruise fades like it was just dirt. Add healing each other to fast healing and transformation.

Something in your mind latches on to this all-things-alive revelation, probably because it pretty much blows your paradigm into tiny threads incapable of holding onto much else at the moment. You try to pursue the little lightbulb going off in your mind, but it’s gone. You sit for a few moments listening to fashion commentary in the back ground and Dan’s steady breathing.

“Bigfoot?

“Yup.

“’Yup’, that’s it?”

“Yes, Bigfoot exists and when he’s not running around naked he wears flannel, builds bikes, and lives in Portland, where he tells people he has a condition.”

“Seriously?”

“Naw. There _is_ a hairy guy from Portland that likes to run around naked in Mount Hood National Forest, but Bigfoot’s a lie. Probably more than a few, but I met that one, he appreciates a bit of music, plays a mean harmonica. Shares his craft beer. S’good.”

Nudity is probably not a big deal to someone who is half fish and all naked. You will soon learn that Cronus’s music tastes are far more suspect. For a who-knows-how-old fish dude, he’s kind of hipster. Not that you’re objecting, west coast drinkers and hipsters keep you in craft beer profits, and hippies and hipsters are the only reason you survived the early years of Dave. (If you hadn’t lived above the Co-op, how sick would he have gotten before you realized he’s allergic to basically anything invented in a lab?)

“Yetis?”

“Real. When a muskox spirit and a winter storm love each other very much...” He snickers and you’re not sure how serious he is.

“Wendigo?”

“Ugh. Yes. Pretty much everyone will kill one on sight or flee, so there’s never many, but there’s always _more_.”

“ _Jackalopes_.”

“Rabbits with the clap. Nothing fae about it.”

“Unicorns?”

“Shit gold”

“Bullshit.”

“100 % pure unicorn shit. It’s the kinda nightsoil that can make _anything_ grow.” The part of you that’s a dedicated farmer, the part of you that periodically takes the backhoe out to rotate the composting manure pile, and watches your crops with the fervency of a first time parent measuring their child against the wall _every time_ , that part finds this very intriguing, but it’s not like you have any unicorns to supply you with experimental goods, so you move on. Cronus’s accent seems to waver in and out without reason. You wonder how much of it is an act.

He explains about iron and salt and how a fae’s reaction to either has less to do with their type or how powerful they are than how closely they dwell to the human experience in a “spiritual sense”. You’re not sure what “spiritual” means for those who may not always be entirely corporeal or at least fixed in one corporeal form, but fortunately most of the things that regard humans as strictly prey are far enough away from it to be vulnerable to iron or steel. It doesn’t have to be a blade. Also fortunately, both your visitors are humanlike _enough_ that you haven’t injured anyone with the flatware or the fridge. Or the massive claw foot porcelain-clad iron tub you dumped Danny into that first night.

You’ll learn more later, though Cronus is hardly shy about talking, seems to have an outright thirst for it, for someone to listen. Listening at least you can do.

All those stories about changelings… are not entirely inaccurate. Not the threaten-the-fairy-babe-to-get-your-own-back parts, but the willy-nilly stealing and substitution. Fae are diverse. They also seem to have a love-hate relationship with children. Some take care of their own, some steal others’, some _eat_ children. Some leave theirs for others to take care of.  Some do all of the above with no discernable reason or pattern. You’re not sure if Cronus and his care for Dan are typical, unusual but not rare, or an extreme outlier. You’re pretty sure you’re reading it correctly that they were both born human and stolen away. Cronus was clearly older at the time.

The fae don’t just age slowly, they seem to have arrested development. Lack of empathy. Pettiness. Rages. He doesn’t tell you this all at once, but you will learn to put it together. You’ve never seen a specialist over the workings of your own mind, but you know that you need order more than most people do. You know that you can be controlling, though you try to limit it to what’s important. Safety. The health of your brother and animals.

You’ve done a lot of research on your own regarding child development, and while Dave, outside of allergies, has attained all the proper milestones of his age in proper order, it sounds like fae gain all their fancy powers before the judgment part kicks in. Some would argue that fourteen year old humans are hardly bastions of good judgment, but you’ve done the birds and the bees talk with Dave, he’s a year or two from getting a learner’s permit and you’ve regularly put him in charge of a ton or two of horse. Personally, you think anyone who has the patience to harness a team and drive them competently has passed a higher standard than driver’s ed. A car doesn’t have the potential to panic.

Maybe most importantly, the fae, at least those that are strong enough to be magically dangerous, cannot lie. They can twist the truth until it turns on itself, they can lead you on wild rambles that leave you thinking they said something else, but they cannot speak an untruth, and they cannot intentionally break a promise.  Cronus relays this to you over the ensuing days, pitching in to weed and pick vegetables with you while Dan keeps the couch warm and feeds everything in the cheese drawer to Bec. He relays it to you as ‘they’, but soon enough you know when he also means “us”.

*

Within the week, Cronus has joined you in your new digs, the Colonel’s old room, yours ceded to Dan. Maybe it’s not as exciting, but mostly it’s just nice to have someone else to lean against, someone else under the covers, and there’s way more cuddling than two adults who have been sincerely feeling out each other over the whole sex question should be so smug about. Well, the extracurricular cuddling is pretty good too. You’ve pretty much mapped each other’s tonsils and everything else, and even if plenty of it was naked, you haven’t actually done any tab and slot enactments. Should you be in a hurry? Would you regret the missed chance when they leave?

Dan starts to look more and more like Cronus, shedding fae characteristics until what’s left appears to be no more fantastical than a slender teen boy with very pretty eyes, hair now almost as short as yours, not cut, just _magically_ shorter. You kind of miss the little horns, they were cute and also fair warning for just how stubborn the kid is. You have to lock the door at night if you plan to do more than just share the bed, or you wake up with more company than was invited. He(?) likes to settle between the two of you, regardless of what you’ve been up to, and you’re pretty sure he’s jealous of the attention each of you pays the other. Why did no one warn you that you accidently adopted a second bratty little brother-child?

Okay, you don’t really mind. Kid’s warm, has dropped all his sharp and pointy armaments, and his clean hair smells more baby-fresh than baby-fish. He doesn’t kick, he just _aggressively snuggles_ , and in doing so tends to push you further apart from Cronus or make you both hold him back. Which puts him firmly above Bec in all categories except whining.


	6. The Arrival of Mr. Ed, aka Bubbles the Phooka

You absentmindedly count your girls as they head into the barn and turn into their stalls for breakfast, and when everyone’s in, there’s one head too many left over. In fact, that’s one set of balls too many because you are _not_ a breeder and you don’t want to deal with another responsibility, no matter how cute foals are. The stud in the doorway is built like a Maude and Mable, not quite a draft, light feathering and strong legs, well developed hindquarters, head and neck more delicate than a full draft, proportional throughout. He steps forward and back, and you get a good look at him as he hesitates in the doorway. He doesn’t cross the threshold. You close the stalls behind your girls and cross your arms and stare at him. He does the little forward and back jig a few more times, and not even a whisker passes the threshold. You know that this isn’t just some unknown neighbor’s lost animal.

“What do you want?”

His ears flick to you. He backs up a step again, stretches his head out to just before the threshold.

“Are you hungry?”

He nods once.

“Are you looking for grain?”

He nods.

“Do you drink blood, eat meat, or otherwise intend any harm to any of the people or animals that live here?”

His ears flick and he hesitates.

“Do you mean any of us any harm?”

He shakes his head. You are talking with a horse. This is surreal.

“Blood’s off the menu, but there’s grain here or sandwiches up at the house. If you intend no harm to any of those who live here or are invited guests, you’re welcome in, but no sex with my mares, or I’ll have your balls. I’m too young and handsome to be a horse grandpa.” Your ladies aren’t in season but you have no idea how long to plan for when fae move in.

(Dan is still romancing your old laptop. He’s discovered Google, YouTube, and Omegle. The world trembles. Cronus, having confessed to last spending significant time on land in the eighties, has bid an emotional goodbye to records and cassettes, skipped CDs entirely, and is hooked on Pandora. The guitar case sometimes contains a guitar, and sometimes it’s providing amnesty to a banjo. Last night it was a sitar, not at all objectionable. At least it’s unlikely to be a harmonica. You have an icepick and a chainsaw. It will not get worse than a banjo.)

The not-horse enters then, a quick hop over the threshold and a not quite charge toward you. He stops inches in front of you and huffs an exhale into your face. You don’t move because if anyone’s winning a game of chicken, it’s you. You huff you own exhale at him. He flicks his ears back and forward again, drops his head. You lift one hand and he sniffs it, drops his muzzle in to lip your palm. He doesn’t bite. The tickle and soft velvet and squish over muscle feels exactly like any other horse.

You get a plastic floor pan then, and set it in the aisle with a scoop of grain, trying to be polite about the whole perhaps-iron-burns thing, leave a stall open but don’t try to shoo him in. He shoves his head down like any other horse, and for a while the only sounds are seven sets of teeth grinding sweet feed. You get a clean bucket and wrap the handle in electrical tape, fill it with water and push the handle flush with the back lip.

He looks up at you when he finishes chasing the last pellets around the circumference of the pan. He horked it so fast that if he was a real horse you’d be thinking about setting large stones in the pan to make him eat more slowly. Hopefully fae don’t colic. His ears flick and he shoves his head into you. You automatically scratch between his eyes and up to his poll, behind his ears, before your mind can quite catch up to how strange it is to do this to a presumably thinking being. One of the reasons you like horses is that they only judge you on the criteria relevant to them. He’s horse-shaped, but also a person. That kind of makes you feel oddly judged in a place that is normally a refuge.

You scratch for a while as he contorts himself to get you at the good spots. His mane and tail are a mess, his coat not far behind. He takes a long drink and drains the bucket, turns back to you and dribbles a bit down your neck. You slap him off and he rumbles a little nicker that sounds exactly like a laugh, then turns and cranes his neck into you for another scratch. You comply and wait for him to straighten out and look at you again before you ask what’s been bothering you.

“You want the full spa treatment, Mr. Ed?” An ear flick, and he stargazes his head high enough up that when he rolls his eyes he manages to convey a look of utter skepticism.

“You want me to brush you down? Get some tangles out?”

It’s a weird situation all around, and this is somewhere between completely-overly-personal-between-strangers, and completely normal. The latter is due to how your hands are almost twitching to set him aright. Maybe fae don’t have all the delicacy of real horses, but even something so simple as not grooming, not regularly inspecting every bit of improbably, ridiculously delicate horseflesh can be dangerous to real horses and whatever he is at home, he’s currently a good looking horse in need of some serious grooming.

He nods. You retrieve a rubber curry comb and a soft brush. You’re going to have to leave his mane and tail for later because the only brushes you have for it are metal. All your hoofpicks are metal. You find a dowel in the tack room, sharpen it and get his hooves clean. You spend a good twenty plus minutes raising up clouds of dander, mud, and possibly magical pixie dust. He’s a gentleman about lifting his feet, and he doesn’t lean onto you while you’re holding them. He turns into a non-literal ball of putty in your hands and basically does everything but purr at you, complete with the nose wrinkling that Munch used to do. Three out of three fae are irredeemable flirts. Good to know. You absently wonder if your sample size is set or you’re going to get more visitors.

Danny will go to ridiculous lengths to get you to offer to brush his hair without having to ask himself. Cronus will spend every moment you let him cuddled up to you. Not just when you’re sleeping or intimate, but when either of you sit down with a book, or you talk on the phone, or you exchange emails with Dave at camp, or sit down to pay your bills.

When you drive the pickup over to the brewery with boxes and boxes of freshly picked herbs for them to play hipster brewmeister, he rides in the middle seat with his left arm over your shoulder and pretends it’s just to talk about how transmissions work. Are all non-homicidal fae touch-starved, or did you accidentally post a psychic want ad? You might have to try a hairbrush on Cronus. For _science_ , as Jade would have said.

As if the thought summoned him (and who knows if it does), Cronus strolls into the barn and does a double take.

“Hey, Boss, you starting a collection?”

The unknown fae’s head jerks up. His cocked back leg slams down. Muscles that had gone lax are tense. He doesn’t quite dance in place, but he’s shifted as if he could bolt or kick at any moment.

You gamble and pat his shoulder. He snorts, but some of the tension ratchets down.

“This is one of my guests,” you tell the not-horse. “If no one intends anyone else harm, then it’s all good.” Head toss, stamp, he backs up a few steps.

“Cro, you want to tell me what this is about?” You don’t look away from your newest guest, who head-butts you hard enough to be a reproof, but nowhere near as hard as he could have. You shove him off.

“I’d have asked you, Mr. Ed, but I don’t know how long I can play twenty questions with yes or no answers only.” You scratch behind his ears and his eyelids droop until you stop.

“Cro?”

“That’s a phooka. And I can see you already invited him in. At least it’s not a waterhorse.”

“Not to be insulting to either of you, but I don’t know precisely what either of those are or how they’re different.”

The previously sleep-dopey four-legged fae jerks his head up and sets his teeth in your shoulder, just hard enough to feel pressure, lets go and snaps once in your direction. It’s not a bite. It’s not even a nip, there was no pinch, just a grip so firm he could have shaken you. It’s very clearly serious offense. He looks like he’s trying to glare at you but horses are built for wide fields of vision and not so much for glaring. Fortunately your bipedal magic fae guest is a bit more articulate. Cro comes closer, until he’s even with your chomped shoulder and he’s talking to you, but it’s clear he’s trying to be polite about not excluding the subject.

“Phooka are shapeshifters. Real shifters, not glamour, and not just two forms or on a continuum between. Usually horses, dogs, goats, hares, or human-seeming. They’re usually not violent without cause, but they like a fair bit of mischief. Might lead travelers astray or play tricks on a household. A waterhorse or a kelpie is a kind of nix or nixie that likes to drown their dinners and eat ‘em. Might leave the liver to float ashore, might not. Smarter than your greenteeth, but not much interested in conversation. Prefer children, ‘cause they’re more tender, easier to overcome, and easier to tempt away by being a pretty, pretty pony. An a kelpie can make anyone that touches them stick until they’ve got their victim in the water.”

Yeesh. Accusing the local graffiti artist and prank caller of pulling a Hannibal Lector, okay, that’s worth offense. “Sorry” you state, and even if you know your voice is dry, the newest pretty, pretty pony on the block drops his head and lets you dandle his ears again. You are not going to squee. You are not the jerk that makes alarming noises around horses.

Cronus helps you finish grooming your girls and then helps you cook up a mess of breakfast. Your new neighbor snuffles the latches of the stalls and the latches on the doors and sticks his head in the tack room then ambles out of the barn to go stick his nose where it likely doesn’t belong. Cronus doesn’t seem bothered so you let it go. In addition to errands you need to get some riding in on Maude and Mable. It wouldn’t hurt anyone else to get a bit of exercise, but you try to get to everyone at least every two to three days, usually every other. It’s easier with someone else and Dave might not be here, but Cronus is decent company on a trail ride and you can inspect all the fields and woods while you’re at it. Dan might even join you, even if tossing him up on Poke is every bit as hilarious as he must have looked curled up on her back as a merthing. Even well muscled, Dan weighs maybe 120? He’s tiny. Poke? Distinctively not tiny. Astride might be more stable, but the kid sure looks saddle-sore as he waddles off bow-legged after. Hilarious.

Danny’s well enough now that he could leave any day, though so far he seems more enchanted with your old laptop than inclined to wandering off into the wild wet. You signed him up for an online US history course and you don’t know how much of it is new to him and how much he might have lived through, at least peripherally, but once he found out that assignments are graded, he’s gotten downright competitive.

Perhaps it is manipulative. Perhaps it is merely what any parent would do with a lost child. Dan’s not lost in the sense of abandonment, but it’s pretty clear to you that he doesn’t have a purpose like Cronus. Cronus is luckier in that he has something to give his days meaning: protecting Dan. Dan is therefore left to determine where they go and why and what ephemeral experience he’ll next chase. You don’t know anything about fish-fae mental health, not beyond your observations, but you don’t think that that’s any healthier or more satisfying than it would be for humans, at least not for long. Perpetual road trip. No home.

When Dan leaves, Cronus will, even if you both enjoy each other’s company and the living situation seems to be working out. You try not to ask questions, because you’ve been lonelier than you’d like to admit while Dave’s been gone and you like knowing that you’re coming home to more than just your girls and Bec. Your girls are decent company, but not much for conversation and they don’t fit in the house. Bec is more of a passive aggressive home security system than a companion at this point. And Finn. Finn’s awesome, but not much for hugs. The barn cat only loves you when you bring food.

You like the company, but you’re going to teach Dan to put his dishes in the dishwasher and to do his own laundry even if it kills one of you. You trained Dave, Dan will not defeat you.

You move breakfast to the table while Cronus goes upstairs to roust Dan out of your old bedroom. You hear a squawk and a laugh and then multiple thumps as Cronus runs back down the stars with a squirming burrito of sheets and Dan-filling slung over his shoulder. Cronus dumps him on the couch and he fights free of the sheets and launches himself at his brother.

They grapple for a bit and Dan clearly thinks he’s finally gaining ground when Cro scoops him up and actually tosses him onto the couch. He’s still bouncing from the landing when Cro pulls his shirt up and blows a huge slobbery raspberry on his belly. He shrieks with involuntary laughter, they grapple again, and this time Cro pins him and he just sort of relaxes until they’re sitting side-by-side, arms slung around one another. You wonder again how old he really is. Physically he looks in the vicinity of fifteen. But much to your parental rue, you know well that fifteen is long past the age when your precious monkey spawn reach that level of maturity known as Eww-Bro-No-Hugs.

You are absolutely not going to wish that Dave was still emotionally needy enough to want someone to kiss his boo-boos. He’s fourteen, finding you embarrassing is a healthy emotional milestone. You might however take vicarious big-brotherhood snuggles when Dan plunks himself between the two of you at night. It’s freely offered and involves no hanky-panky. You have no shame.

You have errands to run and the three of you are making your way through breakfast while you brainstorm the grocery list to cover the three of you plus Dave when there’s a knock on the door. Cronus answers it and you hear him say something, but can’t make out what. A moment later a black pony strolls into the kitchen and slurps Dan’s plateful of seconds clean.

Dan squawks and the pony, somehow clearly your newest visitor in a slightly-more-house-appropriate-form, snags his glass of orange juice and manages to drain it without spilling it. You have no idea how. Clearly eldritch majiks.

Dan goes for his fork, clearly to be followed by going for the pony, and you step in before things devolve further. You point Dan at the cabinet and tell him he’s welcome to get another plate out and serve himself. Hunger wins out over revenge, or even pouting, and he complies. You have learned that positive reinforcement with obvious rewards works best on Dan. Dave would have held out for more concessions. Then again, Dave never would have tried to shish-ka-bob Bubbles.  

You ask the phooka if he wants a refill on eggs and toast and when he nods you tell him you’ll refill his plate if he demonstrates the OJ trick again. He does. He finishes another plate and mooches the newspaper off of Cronus. The two of them split the comics and editorials. Unbelievable.

Dave comes back tomorrow and you’ve mentioned a friend had come to stay with his younger sibling, but you don’t know what to call the phooka. If he shrinks some more you could get him tiny sneakers and show him videos of seeing eye horses at work. That would probably be very irresponsible and also funny. You still don’t know if the phooka’s going to be sleeping in the house, the barn, or Never Never land.

You start a grocery list and watch Dan and Bubbles get into an argument over fish. Cronus referees. You don’t understand a thing the horse says and you wonder if both the aquatically inclined are having you on. You watch the not-horse egg Dan into a furious arm-waving performance over PCBs, the FDA, and GMO franken-salmon which only ends when Bubbles, bored, sneezes in his face and bolts for it. You were actually pretty impressed with how fast Dan had been orientating himself to modernity. Bubbles is clearly not a current events pony.

You have no idea how the phooka got out the front door without opposable digits but you hear the door close and then Dan crash into it, hard. You’re up and out into the front hall before you think about it, and Cronus is just behind you. Dan looks up at both of you from the floor, dazed, bruise already blooming on his face and he looks down and spits a bloody tooth out into his hand. Cronus is down on his knees doing his laying on of the hands thing before you can even process that Dan’s blood is now as red as his apparently human form would imply. The kid hiccups and bursts into tears and you wonder for the nth time how old he is. Cronus scoops him up and rocks him. “ _Shhhh, shhhh, shhhh, it’s okay, you’re going to be fine._ ” Dan clings like a limpet, immune to potential embarrassment over it. Co-dependent enablers. Two against the world. Not that you know anything about that.

You leave them to recover and go add popsicles and milkshake supplies to the grocery list. You wonder if the tooth will grow back in or if model-perfect Danny will have a gap-toothed grin. Not your business. Not really. He’s not your responsibility. You helped him when he was alone and his guardian came to take care of him and if they’re still here it’s temporary. Dave’s back tomorrow. Dave is definitely your responsibility. You add eggs, tofu, miso, and nutritional yeast to the list. So long chicken dinners. 


End file.
